Note 22 — A

Ārādhya.—For the following note I am indebted to Mr. C. Hayavadana Rao. The Ārādhyas are a sect of Brāhmans found mainly in the four northern districts of the Madras Presidency, and to a smaller extent in the Cuddapah and Kurnool districts. A few are also found in the Mysore State. They differ in almost every important respect from other Brāhmans. Basava, the founder of the Lingāyat religion, was born in a family of Brāhmans, who, with others round about them, were apparently the first converts to his religion. According to Mr. C. P. Brown,22 they were “in all probability his personal friends; he persuaded them to lay aside their name, and call themselves Ārādhya or Reverend.’ They revere the four Ārādhyas, visionary personages of the Lingāyat creed, of whom very little is known. At all social and religious functions, birth, marriage, initiation and funerals, four vases of water are solemnly placed in their name, and then invoked to preside over them. Their names are Rēvanārādhya, Marulārādhya, Ekorāmarādhya, and Panditārādhya. In four ages, it is said, these four successively appeared as precursors of the divine Basava, and were, like Basava, Brāhmans. A Purāna, known as the Panditārādhya Charitra, is named after the last of these. Versions thereof are found both in Canarese and Telugu. A Sanskrit poem, called Siddhānta Sikhāmani, represents Rēvanārādhya as a human manifestation of one of the ministers of Siva.