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OF THE HINDUS,
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quiring no particular qualification of caste, order, nor even of sex, for their teachers: they affirm, indeed, that originally they differed from other sects of Vaishnuus in worshipping no sensible representations of the deity, and in excluding even the Tulasi plant and Sulayrum stone from their devotions: they have, however, they admit, recently adopted them, in order to maintain a friendly intercourse with the followers of RÁMÁNAND: 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 Mudhwas, if not from a purer source, consists 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 ofler violence to any created thing, not to imagine evil, not to cherish hatred, and not to indulge in conceit or pride. The other obligations enjoined 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, and to adore Hari as the original and indefinable cause of all, and who, through the operation of Márá, created the miverse, and has appeared in it occasionally in a mortal form, and particularly as KKISHNA at Brindáran.
The followers of CHARAN Dás are both clerical and secular; the latter are chiefly of the mercantile order;
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