is required to repeat it daily, mentally and alone, after bathing, and it may not be recited to any one. It is in Sanskrit, and its form is as follows: ॥ ओं श्रीकृष्णः शरणं मम सहस्रपरिवत्सरमितकालजातकृष्णवियोगज निततापक्लेशानंततिरोभावोहं भगवतेकृष्णाय देहेंद्रियप्राणांतःकरणतच मीश्चदारागारपुत्राप्तवित्तेहपराण्यात्मनासह समर्पयामि दासोहं कृष्ण तवास्मि ॥ १ ॥ TRANSLATION. "Om! Sri Krishna is my refuge. I, who am suffering the infinite pain and torment produced by enduring, for a thousand measured years, separation from Krishna, do to the worshipful Krishna consecrate my body, organs of sense, life, heart, and other faculties, and wife, house, family, property, with my own self. I am thy slave, O Krishna."* For the performance of each of these ceremonies, the Maháráj is paid a fee in money, which is not usually restricted to the prescribed amount, but is ordinarily accompanied with collateral presents, depending upon the opulence, position, or devotion of the votary. Its technical name is the bhet, or present. This samarpana, which professedly absolves from all sins previously committed, is deduced from the Siddhanta-rahasya, and incorporates the dedication there referred to. It is not a barren principle, it must bear fruit; as the preceptor says: "To each of us (himself a Krishna) you thus offer your body, your soul, your wives, your sons, your daughters, your body, mind and property. Before you enjoy any portion of dhan, you must offer it, him or her, to your god personified in us.”† The new full sectary thus goes forth, although disencumbered of his sins, yet heavily burdened morally, and without a claim to any possession; for in this formality he has renounced every possession to his Maháráj. He goes forth to repeat his Translated by Dr. John Wilson. + Speech of Mr. T. C. Anstey in the Libel Case. mantra, whilst numbering the beads of his rosary, which consists of one hundred and eight, made either of the stem of the tulasi plant or sandal-wood. He is marked on his forehead. with two perpendicular red lines, which converge in a semicircle (with a red spot in it) at the root of the nose. These marks are daily renewed after bathing. He goes forth thus to be recognised by his brother sectarians, who mutually salute each other with hands raised to the face and the palms united, exclaiming Jaya Sri Krishna or Jaya Gopála, Victory to Śri Krishna! Victory to Gopála! He goes forth with these marks upon him to be recognised as the enthusiastic devotee of the Maháráj, to whom he has desecrated the purity of his home, under the terrible threat of the denial "of the deliverance of his soul, and of its re-absorption into the divine essence;" under the threat here, also, of excommunication from all intercourse with his fellow devotees, and under the prohibition of enjoying food, or participation in the worship of his idol. His contempt can be purged only by presents and submission, or by the strong act of renunciation of the sect, which few have the moral courage to resolve upon, chained as they are by the relations of life, or the artificial bondage of a conventional condition of society. The woman goes forth a ruined victim. She is undone by the obscenities which she has witnessed and practised, through the dissoluteness of the Maháráj, whom she has been taught to solicit by means of every possible artifice and blandishment, and by enticing presents. She conceives herself to have been honoured by the approach of her god, to whose lust she has joyfully submitted. Her whole nature is thus corrupted. After receiving this initiation, it is incumbent upon the votary to visit the temples at Gokul and Sri Náthadwár at least once in their lives. Having done so, the greatest devotees becomes marjádis,* and can then be attended only * Devoted to the worship of the god. by such persons as shall have also visited the same temples. The mere performance of samarpana is not sufficient to attain this object, for "such disciples may eat only from the hands of each other. The wife, or the child, that has not exhibited the same mark of devotion can neither cook for such a disciple, nor eat in his society." The followers of these Mahárájas have usually in their houses an image of Krishna and a small book or wooden case containing portraits of Krishna in various attitudes, as well as of Vallabháchárya and some of his descendants, which they worship after the morning ablutions and bath. The image represents a young child, and the worship consists in playing before it with toys and childish trifles. But previously to this worship, the suppositious child must be aroused from the slumbers of the night by the ringing of a bell. It is then bathed and dressed, and offerings of fruit and other things are placed before it; a lamp is waved before the image, the light being produced by the combustion of clarified butter; a rosary of one hundred and eight beads is gone over, and with the numbering of each a repetition is made of the mantra of eight letters, as follows:-Śri Krishna sharnanam mama (Śri Krishna is my refuge). After this the thakurji (idol) is placed on his bed, and the votary takes his morning repast, and proceeds about the usual routine of his daily avocations. These are the chief ceremonies of worship, and it will be seen that they are deeply impregnated with the vice inherent in the doctrines on which the ceremonial is framed. It must astonish every one that such debasing practices should proceed from the religious code of intelligent, if not educated, persons; and those who are accustomed to think and to test everything by reason and common sense, can scarcely believe that such fanaticism can exist in an enlightened age. India was the centre of civilization for ages, while other portions of H. H. Wilson's Works. the world were in a state of barbarism; and it is therefore the more remarkable that it should be the locale of this pestilential moral miasma, which the rapid and almost universal spread of intelligence has failed to dissipate. The existence of so foul a plague-spot would suggest that our moral nature has its antithetical phases, and, like the luminaries of the sky, is now at its zenith and now at its nadir; and that the absolute progression of our race, without Divine aid, is but an idle dream and a baseless hope. It would almost seem to be the duty of the rulers of the realm of India to prohibit these practices, in the interest of our common humanity, leaving to public opinion the delicate task of correcting mere social follies and aberrations. Our governments may be legitimately held to be guardians of public morals. At any rate, the efforts of philanthropists for the enlightenment and reformation of India should be increased a hundred fold. CHAPTER VII. EFFECTS OF THE DOCTRINES AND WORSHIP OF THE VALLABHACHARYANS. ALTHOUGH in the preceding chapters we have incidentally adverted to the natural effects of the dissolute teachings of Vallabháchárya and his immediate descendants, and of the commentators who have endeavoured to elucidate the tenets of the sect, we shall here briefly recapitulate them, and show at one view the tendency of the teachings themselves and the baneful effect of the ceremonial which has grown out of them. One of the most conspicuous effects of the doctrines and ceremonial is to draw away the attention of the sectarians The superstitions from the knowledge of the true God. which the Mahárájas have introduced, to subserve their purpose of controlling the consciences of their adherents, lead them to see God only in their religious guides, and to worship "According them as absolute impersonations of the Deity. to the old Brahminical tenet," developed in the philosophical Upanishads on which the Vedanta system is founded, “Brahma, the all containing and Indestructible, the Soul of which the Universe is the Body, abides from eternity to eternity as the fontal source of all spiritual existence: reunion with Brahma, absorption into Brahma, is the beatitude for which every separated spirit yearns, and which after animating its appointed cycle of individuated living organisms, it is ultimately destined to attain. This, then, is the pure and sublime notion |