RELIGIOUS SECTS OF THE HINDUS. 311 



both in this world and the next. Ministrant Priests in temples, there- 

 fore, the Brahmans, collectively speaking, never were — and although 

 many amongst them act in that capacity, it is no more their appropriate 

 province than any other lucrative occupation. In the present day, how- 

 ever, they have ceased to be in a great measure the ghostly advisers 

 of the people, either individually or in their households. This office is now 

 filled by various persons, who pretend to superior sanctity, as Gosains, 

 Vairdgis, and Sanydsis. Many of these are Brahmans, but they are not 

 necessarily so, and it is not as Brahmans that they receive the veneration 

 of their lay followers. They derive it as we have seen from individual 

 repute, or more frequently from their descent from the founder of some 

 particular division, as is the case with the Gokulastha Gosains and the 

 Gosivdmis of Bengal. The Brahmans as a caste exercise little real influ- 

 ence on the minds of the Hindus beyond what they obtain from their 

 numbers, affluence and rank. As a hierarchy they are null, and as a lite- 

 rary body they are few, and meet with but slender countenance from their 

 countrymen or their foreign rulers. That they are still of great import- 

 ance in the social system of British India, is unquestionable, but it is 

 not as a priesthood. They bear a very large proportion to all the 

 other tribes, — -they are of more respectable birth, and in general of 

 better education — a prescriptive reverence for the order improves these 

 advantages, and Brahmans are accordingly numerous amongst the most 

 affluent and distinguished members of every Hindu state. It is only, 

 however, as far as they are identified with the Gurus of the popular 

 sects, that they can be said to hold any other than secular consideration. 



Aware apparently of the inequality upon which those Gurus con- 

 tended with the long established claims of the Brahmanical tribe, the new 

 teachers of the people took care to invest themselves with still higher 

 pretensions. The Achdrya or Guru of the three first classes, is no doubt 

 described by Menu, as entitled to the most profound respect from his pupil 



