MENDICANTS. Mendicancy in India, Burma, and Tibet, amongst Muhammadans and Hindus anal Buddhists, is largely associated with their religious views, and begging is supposed in a great measure to be honourable, a badge of religion, and the honoured occupation of old age. Some of these religionists are professed ascetics ; those of the Hindu faith wander about in the scantiest of garbs, with profusion of ashes on their forehead, beads round their necks, and devotional phrases and verses in their mouths. They visit the most pious of their respective castes and sects, and extort money. The fact that so large a number are professed mendicants is an important one, both from a social and political point of view. Poverty is an evil in any land ; but when a large portion of the populace of any country try to remedy the evil by systematic begging, then the evil to the whole land is rendered tenfold worse. Hand in hand with vagrancy go half the crimes that sully human nature.
• Amongst Hindu mendicants are the Vaishnava Byragi, Saiva Sanyasi, Ramanaya or worshippers of Rama ; Nanik Panthi, followers of Nanik ; Kabir Panthi, Sukhee Bhava, Khelanta Jogi, Kanuphata Jogi, Shurevuri, Aghora Panthi, Brahmachari, etc. They have their various forms of austerities. Mr. Ward was informed that in his day scarcely less than an eighth part of the whole popu lation abandoned their proper employments, and lived as religious mendicants by begging. Many of the more enlightened Hindus and Brahmans hold these mendicants in the utmost contempt, and would consider their being compelled to work as a great blessing conferred upon the country.
The Abdhut is a Hindu mendicant of the Vaish nava or Saiva sect. The term is from the Sanskrit Avadhuta, and this class are supposed to have shaken off the trammels of humanity.
The Akas-mukhi, from Akas, the sky, and Mukha, the face, are religious ascetic mendicants among the Hindus, who hold up their faces to the sky till the muscles of the back of the neck become contracted and retain position.
The Atit religious mendicant is usually a Vaish nava.
Gosain mendicants worship Siva in the form of the lingam, Sanyasi worship Vishnu ; Sanyasi mendicants and the ancient ascetic Viragi are followers of Ramanuj. Mendicants carry water from the Ganges to a great distance. The four orders of Hindu life are not now given effect to. The Bhikshuna, the mendicant of the fourth order, may now have a wife and family.
Jogi, ascetic religious mendicants, are followers of the Saiva doctrines taught by Gorakhnath. They have several sections. But, in popular acceptance, Jogi is a term of almost as general application as those of Sanyasi and Bairagi, and the vagrant mendicants who so style themselves usually follow the dictates of their own caprice as to worship and belief, often assuming the character as a mere cloak for obtaining a lazy livelihood.
Indeed, the Jogi, more than other religious mendicants, add to their religious personification more of the mountebank character. Most of the religious mendicants deal in fortune-telling, in terpretation of dreams, and palmistry ; they are also often empirics, profess to cure diseases with specific drugs or with charms and spells ; but • besides these, the Jogi is usually musical, and plays and sings. He often travels with a small bullock, a goat, or a monkey, whom he has taught to exhibit tricks. The dress of the Jogi is gener ally a cap and coat or frock of many colours. They profess to worship Siva, and often carry the lingam, like the Jangama, in their cap. All classes and sects assume the character, and even Muhammadan Jogi are not uncommon. The Hindu Saringihar Jogi carry a Saringi or small fiddle, with which they accompany their songs ; these are usually Bhasha stanzas on religious or mythological topics, amongst which are stanzas ascribed to Bluirtriliari, and a Puranie legend of the marriage of Siva and Parvati is peculiarly celebrated. The Saringihara beg in the name of Bliairava (Siva). The Dorihar Jogi sect are small pedlars, selling thread and silk. The Mat syendri or Moch'cli-lendriJogi take their name from Matsyendra, whom they regard as their founder ; and the Illiartriliari Jog', from a traditional refer ence to him as their founder. The varieties of the Jogi cannot be specified; they are all errants, fixed residences, or mat'ha, of any Jogi except the Khan Phata rarely occurring.
Besides the above, mention may be made of the Hindu devotees,—Abhyagat, Akali, Aghora, Bahikatha, Bliartrihari, Brahmachari, Bhat, Baitali bhat, Bhati-rupya byragi, Digambar, Gosain, Jati, Jogi, Kanphatta, Kapali, Karta bhoja, Khaki, Sanyasi, Sewara stithra, Udasi.
In Buddhist countries, the Phoungyes pass rapidly through the streets, ringing a bell • to attract attention, but otherwise accepting the un solicited offerings of the people, for the daily food of their monasteries.
The 3fuhaminadan religious mendicants are the darvesh (darvis) of Persia and fakir of India. Their sections in India and Persia are about ten in number, but some in India are not respectable. Mendicancy has undoubtedly greatly diminished since the middle of the 19th century ; it is not deemed reputable, and people give less freely. But when a marriage is being celebrated, either in a Hindu or Muhammadan household, the professional beggars of the sect, bhat, ghatak, nags, raywo, and fakir, hang about the doors, and exact largesse.
The Buddhist mendicants of Tibet are not better than the Muhammadans, but those in Burma and Siam are more respected. The Jangama priests and Vaisbnava mendicants of Mysore wound themselves to extort alms. It is called Pavada.— 1Vilson in Oath Re t. p. 121.