Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/145

 GOBIND DOSS. BAIRAGEE, OR HINDOO DEVOTEE. (144)

HE Bairagees form another great division of the ascetic sects of India, and exist in every part of the country; though there are fewer, perhaps, in the Southern, than in the Northern Provinces. They are perhaps most numerous in the North- West Provinces and the upper valley of the Ganges, as nearest to Muttra, where Krishna, who is their tutelary deity, was born, and lived for some period of his life. Any Hindoo, from the Brahmin to the Sudra, can become a Bairagee. He has only to renounce the world, and take upon himself the vows of the order, and he is free to wander where he pleases, doing penance and pilgrimage. He is to possess no wealth. Should he receive any, he is to distribute it in charity, or apply it to some sacred purpose; and in this respect Bairagees have constructed many noble ghâts, or flights of steps leading down to rivers; wells, temples, and mutts or monasteries of their order, in every part of India. A Bairagee is to keep his body in a perpetual state of mortification and subjection. He cannot marry. If he were married and had children when in the world, he must renounce them; he has no further concern for or with them, and to them, though alive, he is socially dead. Although superiors of the order habitually reside in mutts or monasteries, and certain disciples, or, as they may be termed, monks, belong to it; yet the terms of the order does not allow them to be stationary, and they can only return to it after long absences. They wander to eveiy sacred shrine and locality throughout the length or breadth of the country; and are found alike among the snows of the Himalayas, the parched plains of the south, or the forests and wilds of the east or of the west. Some are men of education and rank in life, others are poor and ignorant, with only a smattering of the real objects of the order; but in one respect there is no difference—that is, in the reality of the frightful penances they undergo, in this respect rivalling the Jogies, though not exceeding them. The varieties of these penances are endless. One may have made a vow to measure his length on the road from Muttra to Dwarka, several hundred miles, and this he fulfils literaly. He lies down on the