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RELIGIOUS SECTS
of the beams, when the goddess, indignant at his presumption, hurled him down and broke his neck: the widow hearing of her husband's fate, immediately hastened to the temple, and liberally abused the vindictive deity. Deví took advantage of the business to make a bargain for her temple, and restored the man to life, on condition that he would ever afterwards buy fuel for HARYÁNAND.
The legends of such other disciples of RÁMÁNAND as occur in the Bhakta Malá will be given in their proper places, and it will be sufficient here to confine our further extracts from that authority to NÁBHÁJI, the author, SÚR Dás, and Tulasi Dás, to whose poetical talents the late version of it is largely indebted, and JAYADEVA, whose songs have been translated by Sir William Jones.
NÁBHÁJI, the author of the Bhakta Mála, was by birth a Dom, a caste whose employ is making baskets and various sorts of wicker work. The early commentators say he was of the Hanumán Vans, or Monkey tribe, because, observes the modern interpreter, Bánar, a monkey, signifies in the Marwar language a Dom, and it is not proper to mention the caste of a Vaishnava by name: he was born blind, and when but five years old, was exposed by his parents, during a time of scarcity, to perish in the woods: in this situation he was found by AGRADÁS and Kil, two Vaishnava teachers: they had compassion upon his helplessness, and Kil sprinkled his eyes with the water of his Kamandalu, or water pot, and the child saw: they carried
