of mah[=a] r[=a]jas (’great kings’).  They are as gods, and command absolutely their devotees.[85] Here the worship of the Infant Krishna reaches its greatest height (or depth).  The image of the infant god is daily clothed, bathed, anointed, and worshipped.  Religious exercises have more or less of an erotic tendency, and here, if anywhere, as one may learn from Wilson, Williams, and other modern writers on this sect, there are almost as great excesses as are committed among the Civaite sects.  As a sect it is an odd combination of sensual worship and theological speculation, for they have considerable sectarian literature.  The most renowned festival of the Infant Krishna is the celebration of the stable-birth of Krishna and of the Madonna (bearing him on her breast), but this we have discussed already.  Besides this the Jagann[=a]th procession in Bengal and Orissa, and the great autumnal picnic called the R[=a]s Y[=a]tra, are famous occasions for displaying Krishnaite, or, indeed, general Vishnuite zeal.  At the R[=a]s Y[=a]tra assemble musicians, dancers, jugglers, and other joy-creating additions to the religious feast, the ostensible reason for which is the commemoration of Krishna’s dances with the milk-maids.  The devotees belong chiefly to the wealthy middle classes.  These low sects worship Krishna with R[=a]dh[=a] (his mistress, instead of Lakshm[=i], Vishnu’s wife).  Here, too, as Krishnaites rather than as Vishnuites, are found the ‘left-hand’ worshippers of the female power.[86]

This sensual corruption of Vishnuism, which is really not Vishnuism but simple Krishnaism, led to two prominent reforms within the fold.  Among the Vallabhas arose in protest the Caran D[=a]s[=i]s, who have taken from the M[=a]dhvas of the South their Ten Commandments (against lying, reviling, harsh speech, idle talk, theft, adultery, injury to life, imagining evil, hate, and pride); and evolved for themselves the tenet that faith without works is dead.  The same protest was made against the Vallabhas by Sv[=a]mi N[=a]r[=a]yana.  He was born about 1780 near Lucknow, and advocated a return to Vallabha’s purer faith, which had been corrupted.  Probably most of the older reformers have had much the same career as had Sv[=a]mi N[=a]r[=a]yana.  Exalted by the people, who were persuaded by his mesmeric eloquence, he soon became a political figure, a martyr of persecution, a triumphant victor, and then an ascetic, living in seclusion; whence he emerged occasionally to go on tours “like a bishop visiting his diocese” (Williams).  He is worshipped as a god.[87] The sect numbers to-day a quarter of a million, some being celibate clergy, some householders.