Chap. II.] HINDOO SECTS. 73
followers accordingly regard him as an incarnation of Krishna, who assumed ad. - the form of Chitanya, for the purpose of instructing mankind in the true mode of worshipping him in this age. Chitanya, whose simplicity and enthusiasm The chitan- ritted him for being a tool, had been put forward by two leading individuals ^'^" of the names of Adwaitanaud and Nityanaud ; and hence, in order to complete the connection, it has been deemed necessary that Krishna, besides incarnating Chitanya, should also animate the other two as ansas or portions of himself At the age of twenty-four, Chitanya became a Vairagi, and spent six years wandering between Muttra and Juggernaut. At the end of this period, having appointed his two coadjutors to preside over the Vaishnavas of Bengal, he fixed his residence at Cuttack, and allowed his imagination to get so much the better of liis judgment, that he was perpetually seeing beatific visions of Krishna, Radha, and the gopis. In one of these he mistook a river for the sea, and fancying that he saw Radha sporting in its blue waters, walked in till he was floated off his legs, and very narrowly escaped drowning by being dragged to shore in a fisherman's net. His death, of which there is no distinct account, may be presumed to have happened in some similar way.
The Chitanyas regard Krishna as the Paramatma, or supreme Spirit, at Their tenets. once the cause and substance of creation. As creator, preserver, and destroyer, he is Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva ; but besides these greater manifestations, has assumed specific shapes, as avatars, or descents ; ansas, or portions ; ansansas, or portions of portions ; and so on, ad injinitwrn. His principal appearance as Krishna was renewed in Chitanya, who is therefore worshipped as that deity himself His other form, as Gopal the cow-herd, or Goponath the lord of the milkmaids of Vindraban, are not forgotten ; and due prominence is given to his juvenile feats under the name of Lila, or sport. The whole religious and moral code of the sect is comprised in the word bhaJdi, "a term that signifies a union of implicit fiiith with incessant devotion," and "is the momentary repetition of the name of Krishna, under a firm belief that such a practice is sufficient for salvation." Hence Krishna himself declares in the Bhagavat Gita that the worship of him alone gives the worshipper "whatever he wishes — paradise, liberation, godhead, and is infinitely more efficacious than all or any observ- ances, than abstraction, than knowledge of the divine nature, than the subjuga- tion of the passions, than the practice of the Yoga, than charity, than virtue, or than anything that is deemed most meritorious." Besides the divisions which may be considered to belong to the sect, there are in Bengal three classes, which, though agreeing with it in many respects, differ so much in others, that they ought to be ranked as seceders from it. One of these, the Spashtha Dayakas, presents two remarkable singularities — first, a denial of the divine character and despotic authority of the guru ; and, secondly, the residence of male and female ccenobites in the same math. The latter practice professes to be platonic. The
male and female members regard each other as brothers and sisters, and have no
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