[Organization.] 8. “It is said that a member of any of the higher Hindu castes may become a Bishnoi; but as a matter of fact they are almost entirely Jâts or carpenters (Khâti), or less frequently, Râjputs or Banyas, and the Banya Bishnois are apparently not found in the Panjâb, their chief seat being Morâdâbâd, in the North-West Provinces. The man who becomes a Bishnoi is still bound by his caste restrictions; he no longer calls himself a Jât, but he can marry only Jât Bishnois, or he is no longer a Khâti, and yet cannot many any one who is not a Khâti; and further than this the Bishnoi retains the gotra of his original tribe and may not marry within this. Karewa is practised among them, but an elder brother cannot marry a younger brother’s widow. [Connection with Vaishnavism.] 9. “There is not perhaps very much in the teaching of Jhâmbaji to distinguish him from the orthodox pattern of Hindu saints, and in some points his doctrine, more especially with regard to the preservation of life, is only an intensification of the ordinary Vaishnava tenets. But in the omission of the circumambulation (phera) at marriage, the cutting off of the scalp-lock, the special ceremony of initiation, and the disregard for the Brâhmanical priesthood, we find indications of the same spirit as that which moved the other Hindu reformers of the period.” [The Bishnois of the North-Western Provinces.] 10. Mahant Âtma Râm, known as Mahârâj or Mahant, the present leader of the Morâdâbâd Bishnois, gives an account of them which, as far as the legends connected with Jhâmbaji, agrees exactly with the Panjâb legend. He names nine endogamous sub-divisions of them—Jât; Bishnoi; Banya Bishnoi; Brâhman Bishnoi; Ahîr Bishnoi; Sunâr Bishnoi; Nâi Bishnoi; Chauhân Bishnoi; Bayhar Bishnoi. The rule of exogamy is that they do not intermarry in their own gotra or in that of their relatives as long as any tie of relationship is remembered.