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OF THE HINDUS.
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family fire, may be met with, but in all other respects they conform to some mode of popular devotion.
The next opponents of SANKARA ACHARYA were the Sauras, or worshippers of the sun, as the creator and cause of the world: a few Sauras, chiefly Brahmans, still exist as a sect, as will be hereafter noticed; but the divisions enumerated by ANANDA GIRI, are now, it is believed, unknown: he distinguishes them into the following six classes.
Those who adored the rising sun, regarding it as especially the type of BRAHMÁ, or the creative power. Those who worshipped the meridian sun as ÍŚwara, the destructive and regenerative faculty; and those who reverenced the setting sun, as the prototype of VISHŃt, or the attribute of preservation.
The fourth class comprehended the advocates of the Trimurti, who addressed their devotions to the sun in all the preceding states, as the comprehensive type of these three divine attributes.
The object of the fifth form is not quite clearly stated, but it appears to have been the adoration of the sun as a positive and material body, and the marks on his surface, as his hair, beard, &c. The members of this class so far correspond with the Sauras of the present day, as to refrain from food until they had seen the sun.
The sixth class of Sauras, in opposition to the preceding, deemed it unnecessary to address their devotions to the visible and material sun: they provided a mental luminary, on which they meditated, and to
