08 
F. S. Growse —Mathura Notes. 
[No. 2, 
I)as and his descendants, the Gosains of the temple of Banke Bihari; and in 
the Introduction to the first Book of my translation of the Ramayana I 
have given an account of Tulsi Das, which I had intended to supplement, 
on the completion of the poem, with a disquisition on his theological system. 
But both translation and disquisition must now be indefinitely postponed; 
for a certain amount of quiet and composure is necessary for the adequate per¬ 
formance of so long and laborious an undertaking. I was under the impres¬ 
sion that such a series, however dull and occasionally repulsive the separate 
articles might be, would still be of interest to the student and supply sound 
material, out of which to construct one short chapter at least in the great 
book of the future, the History of Comparative Religion. This project 
however is very summarily disposed of, since it is only at Mathura that 
MSS. are obtainable, nor would the Gosains communicate them to any one, in 
whom they had not by long intercourse acquired confidence : so suspicious 
are they of European interference. The language moreover in which the 
poems are written is not without difficulty and requires some special study, 
even on the part of natives, before it is readily intelligible. These are pro¬ 
bably the reasons why Prof. Wilson in his ‘ Religious Sects’, is able to give 
very full and accurate accounts of the great teachers of earlier times, who 
wrote in Sanskrit, while his notices of the more modern schools are meagre 
and apparently, as a rule, not derived from original sources. Thus, though 
he devotes five pages to the Radha Yallabhis, he does not mention the name 
even of the Chaurasi Pada, which is their great authority, and to illustrate 
their doctrine, translates a passage from the Brahma Yaivarta Purana, 
which is rather the standard of the Vallabhacharis, a different sect, who 
have their head quarters at Gokul. 
The founder of the Radha Yallabhis was by name Hari Yans. His 
father, Yyasa, was a Gaur Brahman of Deva-ban in the Saharanpur district, 
who had long been childless. He was in the service of the Emperor and on 
one occasion was attending him on the march from Agra, when at last his 
wife Tara gave birth to a son at the little village of Bad, near Mathura, in 
the sambat year 1559. In grateful recognition of their answered prayers, 
the parents named the child after the god they had invoked, and called him 
Hari Yans, i. e., Hari’s issue. When he had grown up, he took to himself 
a wife, by name Rukmini, and had by her two sons and one daughter. 
Of the sons the elder, Mohan Chand, died childless ; the descendants of the 
younger, Gopinath, are still at Deva-ban. After settling his daughter 
in marriage he determined to abandon the world and lead the life of an 
ascetic. With this resolution he set out alone on the road to Brindaban, 
and had reached Charthaval, near ITodal, when there met him a Brahman, 
who presented him with his two daughters and insisted upon his marrying 
them, on the strength of a divine command, which he said he had received 
