VIRAGI, Hindu religious devotees. They are ascetic religious mendicants, properly Vaish nava sectarians, especially in the form of Rama, and in relation to him of Sita and Hanurnan. Some of these ascetics live in rnat'hs, though others of them find employment in conveying, for purposes of worship, the holy water of the Ganges to many of the most distant parts of India, in pitchers slung on bamboos. The term is from the Sanskrit Vi, privative, and Raga, passion, implying a person devoid of passion, and is therefore correctly applicable to every religious mendicant who affects to have estranged himself from the interests and emotions of man kind. Virakta, the dispassionate, and Avadhuta, the liberated, have a similar import, and are • the'refore equally susceptible of a' general appli cation. They are, indeed, so employed in many cases, but it is more usual to attach a more precise sense to the terms, and to designate by them the mendicant Vaishnava of the Ramanandi class, or its ramifications, as the disciples of Kabir, Dadu, and others. The ascetic order of the
Ramanandi Vaishnava is considered to have been instituted especially by the twelfth disciple of Rantanand, Sri Anand. They profess perpetual poverty and continence, and subsist upon alms. The greater number of them \are erratic, and observe no form of worship ; bttt they are also 1\ resident in the mat'h of their res ective orders, and are the spiritual guides of the worldly votaries. It is altnost impossible to( give any general character of these Viragi, as ihough united generally by the watchword of', Vishnu or his incarnations, there are endless varieties amongst them, both of doctrine and practice. Those who are collected in the mat'h are of more fixed principles than their vagrant brethren, amongst -whom individuaLs are constantly appear ing in some new form with regard to the deity they worship or the practices they follow.— Professor T-Vilson, Hindu Sects ; Cole. Myth. Hind.