Note 28 — B

The Nimbârak sect. 4. Of the Nimbârak Mr. Growse28 writes:—“The word means ‘the sun in a nîm tree,’ a curious designation which is explained as follows:—The founder of the sect, an ascetic, by name Bhaskarachârya, had invited a Bairâgi to dine with him, but unfortunately delayed to fetch his guest until after sunset. Now the holy man was forbidden by the rules of his order to eat except in the daytime, and was greatly afraid that he would be compelled to practise an unwilling abstinence; but at the solicitation of his host the Sun God, Sûraj Nârâyan, descended from the Nîm tree, under which the repast was spread, and continued beaming upon them until the claims of hunger were fully satisfied. Thenceforth the saint was known by the name of Nîmbarka or Nimaditya. Their doctrines, so far as they are known, are of a very enlightened character. Thus their doctrine of salvation by faith is thought by many scholars to have been directly derived from the Gospel; while another article in their creed, which is less known but is equally striking in its divergence from ordinary Hindu sentiment, is the continuance of conscious individual existence in a future world, when the highest reward of the good will be not extinction, but in the enjoyment of the visible presence of the divinity whom they have served while on earth: a state, therefore, absolutely identical with heaven, as our theologists define it. The one infinite and invisible God, who is the only real existence, is, they affirm, the only proper object of man’s devout contemplation. But as the incomprehensible is utterly beyond the reach of human faculties, He is partially manifested for our behoof in the book of Creation, in which natural objects are the letters of the universal alphabet, and express the sentiments of the Divine Author. A printed page, however, conveys no meaning to any one but a scholar, and is liable to be misunderstood even by him; so, too, with the book of the world. And thus it matters little whether Râdhâ and Krishna were ever real personages, the mysteries of divine love which they symbolise remain though the symbols disappear.”