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OF THE HINDUS.
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lay votaries of these teachers are members of every class of society, except the lowest, and each Guru has a number of families hereditarily attached to him, whose spiritual guidance he may sell or mortgage to a Brahman of any sect.
The ascetic professors of MADHWACHARYA's school adopt the external appearance of Dandis, laying aside the Brahmanical cord, carrying a staff and a waterpot, going bare-headed, and wearing a single wrapper stained of an orange colour with an ochry clay: they are usually adopted into the order from their boyhood, and acknowledge no social affinities nor interests. The marks common to them, and the lay votaries of the order, are the impress of the symbols of Vishnu upon their shoulders and breasts, stamped with a hot iron, and the frontal mark, which consists of two perpendicular lines made with Gopichandana, and joined at the root of the nose like that of the Sri Vaishnavas; but instead of a red line down the centre, the Madhwácháris make a straight black line with the charcoal from incense offered to Nárayana, terminating in a round mark made with turmeric.
The essential dogma of this sect, like that of the Vaishnavas in general, is the identification of Vishnu with the Supreme Spirit, as the pre-existent cause of the universe', from whose substance the world was
In proof of these doctrines they cite the following texts from the ŚRUTI, or VEDAS:
एको नारायण आसीन्न ब्रह्मा न च शङ्करः । "Narayana alone was; not Brahmá nor Sankara."