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OF THE HINDUS.
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officiate indeed as the priests of that deity in some places, especially at the celebrated Lút, or Staff, of BHAIRAVA at Benares. They mark the forehead with a transverse line of ashes, and smear the body with the same; they dress in various styles, but in travelling usually wear a cap of patch-work and garments dyed with red ochre. Some wear simply a Dhoti, or cloth round the loins.
The term Jogi, in popular acceptation, is of almost as general application as Sannyasi and Vairágí; and it is difficult to fix its import upon any individual class besides the Kanphatá: the vagrants so called following usually the dictates of their own caprice as to worship and belief, and often, it may be conceived, employing the character as a mere plea for a lazy livelihood. The Jogis are, indeed, particularly distinguished amongst the different mendicant characters by adding to their religious personification more of the mountebank than any others: most of the religious mendicants, it is true, deal in fortune-telling, interpretation of dreams, and palmistry; they are also often empirics, and profess to cure diseases with specific drugs, or with charms and spells: but besides these accomplishments, the Jogi is frequently musical, and plays and sings; he also initiates animals into his business, and often travels about with a small bullock, a goat, or a
small door, be neither too lofty, nor too low, be well smeared with cow-dung, and should be kept clean and free from reptiles: the Math should have a temple, a mound or altar, and a well adjoining, and be enclosed by a wall.
