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OF THE HINDUS.
one or two exceptions, and, indeed, at no one place in India could the enquiry be so well prosecuted as at Benares". The work of MATLURÁ NÁru is the fullest and most satisfactory, though it leaves much to be desired, and much more than I have been able to supply. In addition to these sources of information, I have had frequent recourse to a work of great popularity and extensive circulation, which embodies the legendary history of all the most celebrated Bhaktas or devotees of the Vaishňava order. This work is entitled the Bhakta Málá. The original, in a difficult dialect of Hindi, was composed by NÁBHÁJI, about 250 years ago?, and is little more than a catalogue, with brief and obscure references to some leading circunstances connected with the life of each individual, and from the inexplicit nature of its allusions, as well as the difficulty of its style, is far from intelligible to the generality even of the natives. The work, in its present form, has received some modifications, and obvious additions from a later teacher, NÁRÁYAŃ Dás, whose share in the composition is, no doubt,
The acknowledged resort of all the vagabonds of India, and all who have no where else to repair to: so, the Kási Khand:
श्रुतिस्मतिविहीनानां ये शौचाचारविवर्जिताः।
येषां क्वापि गतिनास्ति तेषां वाराणसी गतिः ॥ "To those who are strangers to the Sruti and Smriti (Religion and Law); to those who have never known the observance of pure and indispensable rites; to those who have no other place to repair to; to those, is Benares an asylum.” [Compare Prabodhach. ed. Brockhaus, p. 19.]
? [Journ. As. Soc. Bombay, Vol. III, p. 4.]
