________________
204
RELIGIOUS SECTS
on them a due share of the cates provided for their more worldly - minded brethren. Many of them practice the Yoga, and profess to work miracles, although with less success than some members of the order in tlie days of the author of the Dabistán", who specifies one Dandadhárí as able to suspend his breath for three hours, bring milk from his veins, cut bones with hair, and put eggs into a narrow-mouthed bottle without breaking them.
The remaining six and a half members of the Daśnámi class, although considered as having fallen from the purity of practice necessary to the Dandi, are still, in general, religious characters, and are usually denominated Atits': the chief points of difference between them and the preceding are their abandonment of the staff; their use of clothies, money, and ornaments; their preparing their own food, and their admission of members from any order of Hindus. They are often collected in Maths, as well as the Dandis, but they mix freely in the business of the world; they carry on trade, and often accumulate property, and they frequently officiate as priests at the shrines of the deities?: some of them even marry, but in that case they are distinguished by the term Samyogi from the other Atits.
* [Vol. II, p. 148.]
? From xata Atita, past away, liberated from worldly cares and feelings.
? The officiating priests at the celebrated shrine of ANNAPÚRŃA, in Benares, are Atits.
