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OF THE HINDUS.
231
PARAMAHANSAS.
According to the introduction to the Dwadasa Mahúvákya, by a Dandi author, VAIKUNTHA Puri, the Sannyúsi is of four kinds, the Kutichura, Bahúdaka, Hansa, and Paramahansa: the difference between whom, however, is only the graduated intensity of their self-mortification and profound abstraction. The Paramahansa' is the most eminent of these grada
a number of houses occupying a considerable space, called the Jangam Bárí: the title to the property is said to be a grant to the Jangamas, regularly executed by Máy Sins, and preserved on a copper plate: the story with which the vulgar are deluded is, that it was granted by one of the Emperors of Hindustan in consequence of a miracle performed by a Jangama devotee. In proof of the veracity of his doctrine he proposed to fly: the Emperor promised to give him as much ground as he could traverse in that manner: not quite satisfied of the impossibility of the feat, he had a check string tied to the ascetic's legs, and held by one of the attendants: the Jangama mounted, and when he reached the limits of the present Jangama Bárí, the Emperor thinking that extent of ground sufficiently liberal had him constrained to fly back again.
'Moor, in his Hindu Pantheon (page 352), asserts, upon, as he says, authentic information, that the Paramahansas eat human Aesh, and that individuals of this sect are not very unusually seen about Benares, floating down the river, and feeding upon a corpse: it is scarcely necessary to add that he is wholly wrong: the passage he cites from the Researches is quite correct, when it describes the Paramahansa as an ascetic of the orthodox sects, in the last stage of exaltation; and the practice he describes, although far from usual, is sometimes heard of as a filthy exhibition displayed for profit by individuals of a very different sect, those who occupy the ensuing portion of the present text--the Aghoris,
