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104 enforce Sivaite conformity throughout his dominions, Rámánuja fled to the Jain sovereign of Mysore. This Jain prince he converted to the Vishnuite faith by expelling an evil spirit from his daughter. Seven hundred monasteries, of which four still remain, are said to have been erected by his followers before his death.

Ramanand, 1300-1400 A.D.—Rámánand stands fifth in the apostolic succession from Rámánuja, and spread his doctrine through Northern India. He had his headquarters in a monastery at Benares, but wandered from place to place, preaching the one God under the name of Vishnu. He chose twelve disciples, not from the priests or nobles, but among the despised castes. One of them was a leather-dresser, another a barber, and the most distinguished of all was the reputed son of a weaver. Ramanuja had addressed himself chiefly to the pure Aryan castes, and wrote in the Sanskrit language of the Bráhmans. Ramanand appealed to the people, and the literature of his sect is in the dialects familiar to the masses. The Hindi vernacular owes its development into a written language, partly to the folk-songs of the peasantry and the war-ballads of the Rájput court-bards, but chiefly to the literary requirements of the new popular religion of Vishnu.

Kabír, 1380-1420 A. D.—Kabír, one of the twelve disciples of Rámánand, carried his doctrines throughout Bengal. As his master had laboured to gather together all castes of the Hindus into one common faith, so Kabír, seeing that the Hindus were no longer the whole inhabitants of India, tried, about the beginning of the fifteenth century, to build up a religion that should embrace Hindu and Muhammadan alike. The writings of his sect acknowledge that the God of the Hindu is also the God of the Musalmán. His universal name is The Inner, whether he be invoked as the Alí of the Muhammadans, or as the Ráma of the Hindus. 'To Alí and to Rima we owe our life,' say the scriptures of Kabír's sect, 'and we should show like tenderness to all who live. . . . The Hindu fasts every eleventh day; the Musalmán on the Ramazán. Who formed the remaining months and days, that you should venerate but one? . . . The city of the Hindu God is to the east [Benares],