1873.] 
G. A. Grierson— The Song of Ma n ih Clumdra. 
187 
and the lights in his dwelling burnt with surpassing splendour, though 
only fed with Ganges water. 
Now this man was a sweeper. 
The Ha'di Siddha. 
He was a Uadi, the caste which acts as sweeper in Bangal. In Rang- 
pur its impurity signifies nameless abomination, a fact which should be 
specially noted. Rangpur forms part of Kamarupa. Hither one of the 
five Bandavas never set his foot, and the land is consequently impure. 
Its men are not as other men, nor its laws as other laws. It has a special 
code of its own, most of which can be found in the Yog ini Tantra ; and 
this law allows many things (such as certain kinds of flesh eating) to its 
straitest sects of Brahmans. Hence impurity in Western India frequently 
becomes purity in Rangpur; while Rangpur impurity includes things 
simply inconceivable in Arya varta. 
The Hadi of the poem, and of the popular legends of the present day 
was a Yaishnava ; and as Mayana was also of the same sect (in which the 
members are practically all of one caste) it is not impossible that she should 
have had such a man for her Guru. 
I say only “not impossible,” for I consider it highly improbable, and 
for the following reasons :—It is evident that the true story has been much 
transformed in its passage from mouth to mouth, and I believe that the 
principle recasting (if I may call it so) was due to the influence of the 
Yaishnava followers of Chaitanya. Translated into common English the 
story is that Mayana’s chaplain was a man of remarkable sanctity, whom 
the populace credited with supernatural powers. He was a great saint, and 
his religion followed that of his historians. The Yogis who narrate his 
history are at the present day followers of the teachers of the religion of 
Vishnu (not, be it observed, the popular Yaishnavas , vulgo Boishtoms) ; and 
they naturally claimed their hero as belonging to their own sect. It is 
peculiarly the tendency of this beautiful, almost Christian, religion to preach 
the doctrine of the equality of castes ;—how every valley shall be exalted, 
and the rough places made smooth. The lowest amongst the low,—the 
despised and rejected amongst men, is fully capable of attaining equal holi¬ 
ness with the strictest Brahman of the holiest sect which worships at the 
shrines of Yrinddvana. Such being the case, what is more natural than 
that the ignorant and illiterate members of the same religion, who (like the 
Yogis) have the traditions of a missionary priesthood in their family, should 
instinctively point out how even an abominable Hadi can attain the terrible 
powers which their fathers attributed to a Yasishtha or to a Darvdsa. 
But, now that I have shown that it is quite possible for such an idea 
to have arisen, I would point out that the man who is now called the 
