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RELIGIOUS SECTS
faith, and a like parallel may be drawn between the disciples of RÁMÁNAND and those of GORAKHNÁri, or the Kämphútá Jogis, the first pair being properly restricted to the Brahmanical order, intended chiefly for men of learning; the two latter admitting members from every description of people, and possessing a more attractive popular character.
The term Jogi or Yogi is properly applicable to the followers of the Yoga or Pútanjala school of philosophy, which, amongst other tenets, maintained the practicability of acquiring, even in life, entire command over elementary matter by means of certain ascetic practices. The details of these it is unnecessary to particularize, and accounts of them and of the Yoga philosophy will be best derived from the translation of BHOJA DEVA's Comment on the Pátanjala Sútras, in WARD's Account of the Hindus, and Mr. COLEBROOKE'S Essay on the Sánkkya and Pátanjala doctrines, in the 1st volume of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is sufficient here to observe, that the practices consist chiefly of long continued suppressions of respiration; of inhaling and exhaling the breath in a particular manner; of sitting in eighty-four different attitudes; of fixing the eyes on the top of the nose, and endeavouring, by the force of mental abstraction, to effect a union between the portion of vital spirit residing in the body and that which pervades all nature, and is identical with Siva, considered as the supreme being and source and essence of all creation. When this mystic union is effected, the Yogi is liber
