30 INTRODUCTION. would shut their gate against her and her very touch would be avoided by her friends as that of a leper. Here she stands a martyr for love alone. So Parakiyā, or love for one other than one's husband, is by far a truer test of selflessness than fidelity and sacrifices undergone in a nuptial cause. The Sahajiyās say that it is easy to worship a stone or wooden image of God. It is agreeably non-interfering. But to love a man or a woman with a whole-hearted devotion is very difficult. One must never murmur, never cross the person whom one adores in the spirit of true worship but must bear all ills from him or her without grumbling. It is only when disinterested love has been cultivated in this way, that the portals of love's heaven will be opened to a person. He will then and then only be fit to realize the love of God. This is surely is a dangerous theory to practise. So the Sahajiyās and Kartābhajãs, as I have stated, keep their doctrines strictly secret The victory of the to all except the initiated. In the Hindu Society, Sahajiyas in Bengal, where the married couple have no choice in mutual selection, Parakiyā is a rebellious and daring off-shoot of Nature repressed. It is a violent retribution for the compulsion of unchosen and romanceless wedded life. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the Christian era, the country was so full of these ideas that Chaitanya Deva had to be unusually hard upon those of his followers who showed the least tendency towards romantic love. This explains his severe attitude towards junior Haridãs. To Râm Roy, who asked him why he so scrupulously avoided the company of women—he being God incarnate, his reply was:– “I am a man and belong to the Holy Order of Sannyäsis. So I must be pure in thought, in action and speech. Just as a dark spot, however small, becomes prominent in a piece of white cloth, so even a small fault of a Sannyäsi becomes great in people's eyes.”—But a century and a half after Chaitanya Deva passed away, the Sahajiyās again gained ground in the Vaisnava Society. It will be interesting to read the two documents quoted on pp. 1638–1643 which announce the defeat of those scholars who advocated orthodox principles in sexual morality and had a controversy with the Sahajiyās for a period of six months. Nearly all the best scholars among the Vaisnavas in the first half of the 18th century in Bengal, Benares and Jaypur took part in the discussion, enlisting themselves on one side or the other, before a regular court presided over by high officers deputed by Nawab Ali Vardi Khan. The victory of the Sahajiyās not only meant an intellectual triumph but a substantial increase in their income as they obtained the disciples claimed by the other party and this was a great wordly gain to them. These two documents were registered in Nawab Ali Vardi's court in 1717 A.D. They enforced extremely humiliating conditions to which the supporters of
