DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31218#0147
SECTARIAN CASTES
of the sect, and lead a celibate life. This rite is usually
postponed until the novice is forty or fifty years of age,
as it involves the abandonment of wife and family. Ap-
parently it is these ‘lay brethren’ who are Grihasthas;
many, indeed, seem never to become vanaprastas at all,
whilst of those that do, some (even mahants or heads of
ascetic bodies) abandon all attempt to lead a religious life.
Some Goshains are traders; others are practically land-
holders, though nominally they are trustees for a deity of
lands that have been given to his shrine.
The Sadh or Satnami sect was founded by one Birbhan
in 1543. It is a sect pure and simple, re-
4. The Sadh cruited from all castes. As a group, how-
ever, the Sadhs are endogamous; distinc-
tions of rank or wealth are ignored in arranging marri-
ages and their formula of exogamy is that which forbids
marriage into a family with which any previous inter-
marriage is remembered. As a body, they are
hard-working, industrious, and charitable to their own
poorer fellows : they live in one muhalla and eat and drink
together. The marriage rite, though based on the usual
Hindu form (there is circumambulation, for instance, of
the pair with clothes knotted together), is extremely sim-
ple. There is infant betrothal; marriage takes place after
puberty. Divorce is permitted only as concomitant to
excommunication from the sect. Their creed is unitarian :
they have 112 rules of faith, inculcating
(i) worship of one God,
(ii) modesty and humility,
(iii) truth and honesty,
(iv) praise of God,
(v) absence of covetousness,
(vi) the abandonment of caste distinctions,
(vii) simplicity of clothing,
(viii) vegetarianism and sobriety :
and forbidding,
(ix) murder, tyranny, and violence,
(x) polygamy,
(xi) begging,
(xii) the observance of particular feast days.
133
of the sect, and lead a celibate life. This rite is usually
postponed until the novice is forty or fifty years of age,
as it involves the abandonment of wife and family. Ap-
parently it is these ‘lay brethren’ who are Grihasthas;
many, indeed, seem never to become vanaprastas at all,
whilst of those that do, some (even mahants or heads of
ascetic bodies) abandon all attempt to lead a religious life.
Some Goshains are traders; others are practically land-
holders, though nominally they are trustees for a deity of
lands that have been given to his shrine.
The Sadh or Satnami sect was founded by one Birbhan
in 1543. It is a sect pure and simple, re-
4. The Sadh cruited from all castes. As a group, how-
ever, the Sadhs are endogamous; distinc-
tions of rank or wealth are ignored in arranging marri-
ages and their formula of exogamy is that which forbids
marriage into a family with which any previous inter-
marriage is remembered. As a body, they are
hard-working, industrious, and charitable to their own
poorer fellows : they live in one muhalla and eat and drink
together. The marriage rite, though based on the usual
Hindu form (there is circumambulation, for instance, of
the pair with clothes knotted together), is extremely sim-
ple. There is infant betrothal; marriage takes place after
puberty. Divorce is permitted only as concomitant to
excommunication from the sect. Their creed is unitarian :
they have 112 rules of faith, inculcating
(i) worship of one God,
(ii) modesty and humility,
(iii) truth and honesty,
(iv) praise of God,
(v) absence of covetousness,
(vi) the abandonment of caste distinctions,
(vii) simplicity of clothing,
(viii) vegetarianism and sobriety :
and forbidding,
(ix) murder, tyranny, and violence,
(x) polygamy,
(xi) begging,
(xii) the observance of particular feast days.
133