The tribes and castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Volume 2 (of 4)Crooke, William
History
The tribes and castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Volume 2 (of 4)
Crooke, William
Caste -- India -- History; Hindus -- India; Tribes -- India -- History
2. Of the tenets of the sect, Prof. Wilson [213] writes:—“Their
doctrines of universal emanation are much the same as those of the
Vedanta school, although they correspond with the Vaishnava sects in
maintaining the great source of all things, or Brahma to be Krishna;
reverence of the Guru, and assertion of the pre-eminence of faith above
every other distinction, are also common to them with other Vaishnava
sects, from whom probably they only differ in requiring no other
qualification of caste, order, or even of sect, for their teachers;
they affirm, indeed, that originally they differed from other sects of
Vaishnavas in worshipping no sensible representations of the deity, and
in excluding even the tulasi plant and the Sâlagrâma stone from their
devotions; they have, however, they admit, recently adopted them, in
order to maintain a friendly intercourse with the followers of
Râmanand: another peculiarity in their system is the importance they
attach to morality, and they do not acknowledge faith to be independent
of works; actions, they maintain, invariably meet with retribution or
reward; their moral code, which they seem to have borrowed from the
Mâdhavas, if not from a purer source, consist of ten prohibitions. They
are not to lie, not to revile, not to speak harshly, not to discourse
idly, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to offer violence to
any created thing, not to imagine evil, not to cherish hatred, and not
to indulge in conceit or pride. The other obligations are,—to discharge
the duties of the profession or caste to which a person belongs, to
associate with pious men, to put implicit faith in the spiritual
preceptor, to adore Hari as the original and indefinable cause of all,
and who, through the operation of Mâya, created the universe, and has
appeared in it occasionally in a mortal form, and particularly as
Krishna at Brindaban.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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