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RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
Rájá of Kalyanpur was killed and his capital destroyed. The Mohammedan invasion of the south crushed both the contending parties, and the predominance of the same power in Upper India prevented the like violence of collision. The Vaishóavas there spread with little resistance under the followers of Rámánand, a disciple of Rámánuja, to whom, or to whose pupils, the greater proportion of the mendicant orders in Hindustan owe their origin, and under two Brahmanical families, one in the west spring from a teacher named Vallabha, who established themselves as hereditary priests of the juvenile Krishúa, and one in Bengal and Orissa descended from Nityanand and Adwaitánand. two disciples of Chaitanya, a teacher, with whom the popularity of the worship of Jagannáth originated. A particular description of all the different divisions of the popular religion of the Hindus may be found in the sixteenth and seventeenth volumes of the Asiatic Researches!
These different orders and families are now almost exclusively the spiritual directors of the people. Some of them are rich and of Brahmanical descent; some are poor and composed of persons of all castes. They are almost all, whether rich or poor, illiterate and profligate. Such literature as they occasionally cultivate—and it is one of the means by which they act upon the people - is vernacular literature, composi
Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Ilindus, As. Res. Vol. XVI, p. 1, and XVII. p. 169. [Vol. I. of Wilson's Essays.]