Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/132

116 give a brief sketch of the career of the late Jivanlálji Máháráj, of Gujarát, who is now supposed to be a saint in the Vaishnava heaven.

The Vaishnavas of Western India went into mourning the other day, out of respect for the memory of Jivánlálji Máháráj, one of their "great lords." Jivánlálji Máháráj died of "some disease," and, so far, it is not satisfactory, I fear, for his numerous devotees to learn that their "great lord," the ever-youthful and immortal, should have succumbed like an ordinary mortal to mere physical ailment. What the "some disease" was I have no curiosity to know; but many will guess that it was an accumulation of the after effects of what Englishmen in other spheres of society designate "gay life."

Jivánlálji Máháráj was born 51 years ago. There is a profound mystery always overhanging the personal affairs of the Máháráj. That mystery shrouds his birth, it shrouds his life, and I'll be bound that same mystery shrouds his death. We know that he was born in 1829, visibly of human parents; but some hundreds of