Page:Classical Poets Of Gujarat.pdf/83

 71

Throughout the period during which the poets have lived, Gujarat has been a conquered province and has had very little to do with politics. People here have, therefore, lived only for economical, social, and religious ends. The province has always yielded a rich harvest of merchants who covered not only the whole of India, but travelled beyond the seas. These children of indus- try and enterprise are soft and gentle at home, and the poetry of the Vaishnay religion had, by the laws of selec- * tion, special charm for them. The Banya community is divided into a majority of Vaishnavas and a minority of Jains. The Vaishnav poetry provided for their minds an intellectual recreation which had nothing harmful about it so long as the amorous Vishnu was left to be sought in the heavens or in the. inanimate idol, and not inthe tangible and living persons of the much-abused descen- dants of Vallabhacharya. Those who have sung of the invisible Vishnu alone and of his idol have only helped the cause of women. The temples of Vishnu have, as noted by the author of the “Annals of Rajasthan ” dragged women from their seclusions, and the religion that taught that manas well as woman was but a woman before Hari who was the only owner of the masculine epithet, placed man and woman on the same level. Man sang and danced like woman and in the company of woman: and to suppose that such mixed gatherings were fruitful of immorality is no less a