lead the pampered life of the professional beggars and hangers-on of Agra or Delhi. Poverty and immemorial custom alike preserved the womankind of Maharashtra (except among those castes that aspired to be Kshatriyas) from seclusion in the harem, and thus the effective strength of society was doubled, while life gained in health and sweetness.
§5. Religious teachers.
The same sense of equality was fostered by religion. The Brahmans, no doubt, tried to maintain their monopoly of the sacred lore and their aloofness from other castes as a sort of spiritual aristocracy. But strong religious movements arose and swept through the length and breadth of the land, teaching the sanctity of conduct rather than mere birth, the superiority of a living personal faith to mere ritual, and the oneness of all true believers before God. These popular movements were hostile to the haughty claims of the Brahman hierarchy, and their chief centre was Pandharpur, one of the most famous seats of pilgrimage in the land.
" Like the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 16th century, there was a religious, social, and literary revival and Reformation in India, but notably in the Deccan in the 15th and 16th centuries. This religious revival was not Brahmanical in its orthodoxy; it was heterodox in its spirit of protest against forms and ceremonies and class distinctions based on birth, and ethical in its preference of a pure heart,
