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OF THE HINDUS.
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more important restraints than those of regimen and ablution: the popular character of the works of this school corroborates this view of RÁMÁNANDA's innovation; SANKARA and RÁMÁNUJA writing to and for the Brahmanical order alone, composed chiefly, if not solely, Sanskrit commentaries on the text of the Vedas, or Sanskrit expositions of their peculiar doctrines, and the teachers of these opinions, whether monastic or secular, are indispensably of the Brahmanical casteit does not appear that any works exist which are attributed to RÁMÁNAND himself, but those of his followers are written in the provincial dialects, and addressed to the capacity, as well as placed within the reach, of every class of readers, and every one of those may become a Vairagí, and rise, in time, to be a Gwu or Mahant.
We shall have occasion to speak again particularly of such of the above mentioned disciples of RÁMÁNAND, as instituted separate sects, but there are several who did not aspire to that distinction, and whose celebrity is, nevertheless, still very widely spread throughout Hindustan: there are also several personages belonging to the sects of particular note, and we may, therefore, here pause, to extract a few of the anecdotes which the Bhakta Malá relates of those individuals, and which, if they do not afford much satisfactory information regarding their objects, will at least furnish some notion of the character of this popular work.
Pirá, the Rájaput, is called the Rájá of Gángaraun: he was originally a worshipper of Deví, but abandoned
