Note 32 — C

2. Of the tenets of the sect, Prof. Wilson32 writes:—“Their doctrines of universal emanation are much the same as those of the Vedanta school, although they correspond with the Vaishnava sects in maintaining the great source of all things, or Brahma to be Krishna; reverence of the Guru, and assertion of the pre-eminence of faith above every other distinction, are also common to them with other Vaishnava sects, from whom probably they only differ in requiring no other qualification of caste, order, or even of sect, for their teachers; they affirm, indeed, that originally they differed from other sects of Vaishnavas in worshipping no sensible representations of the deity, and in excluding even the tulasi plant and the Sâlagrâma stone from their devotions; they have, however, they admit, recently adopted them, in order to maintain a friendly intercourse with the followers of Râmanand: another peculiarity in their system is the importance they attach to morality, and they do not acknowledge faith to be independent of works; actions, they maintain, invariably meet with retribution or reward; their moral code, which they seem to have borrowed from the Mâdhavas, if not from a purer source, consist of ten prohibitions. They are not to lie, not to revile, not to speak harshly, not to discourse idly, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to offer violence to any created thing, not to imagine evil, not to cherish hatred, and not to indulge in conceit or pride. The other obligations are,—to discharge the duties of the profession or caste to which a person belongs, to associate with pious men, to put implicit faith in the spiritual preceptor, to adore Hari as the original and indefinable cause of all, and who, through the operation of Mâya, created the universe, and has appeared in it occasionally in a mortal form, and particularly as Krishna at Brindaban.