444 ORISSA. of salvation. The followers of Chaitanya belong to every caste, but they acknowledge the rule of the descendants of the six original disciples (Gosáins). The sect is open alike to the married and the unmarried. It has its celibates and wandering mendicants, but its religious teachers are generally married men. They live with their families and dependants in little clusters of houses around a teniple of Vishnu, and in this way the adoration of Chaitanya has become a sort of family worship throughout Orissa. In Puri there is a temple specially dedicated to his name, and many little shrines are scattered over the country. But he is generally adored in connection with Vishnu; and of such joint temples there are at present 300 in the town of Puri, and 500 more throughout the District. The worship of Chaitanya extends through all Orissa ; and there has been compiled a long list of landed families, who worship him with a daily ritual in household chapels dedicated to his name. At this moment, Chaitanya is the apostle of the common people. The Bráhmans, unless they happen to enjoy grants of land in his name, ignore his work. In almost every Bráhman village the communal shrine is dedicated to Siva; but in the villages of the ordinary husbandnien, it is Vishnu who is worshipped, and Chaitanya who is remembered as the great teacher of the popular faitli. The death of Chaitanya marks the beginning of the spiritual decline of Vishnu-worship. The most deplorable of its corruptions at the present day is that which has covered the temple walls with indecent sculptures, and filled their innermost sanctuaries with licentious rites. It is very difficult for a person not a Hindu to pronounce upon the real extent of this evil. None but a Hindu can enter any of the larger temples, and none but a Hindu priest really knows the truth about their inner mysteries. But between Vishnuism and LoveWorship there is but a step, and this step has been formally and publicly taken by a large sect of Vishnuites. As early as 1520, a teacher, Vallabha-Swami, appeared in Northern India, preaching that the liberation of the soul depended not upon the mortification of the body, and that God was to be sought not in nakedness and hunger and solitude, but amid the enjoyments of this life. The special object of his adoration was Vishnu, in his pastoral incarnation as Krishna, leading a glorious Arcadian life in the forest. The legends surround him with all that makes existence beautiful. Shady bowers, lovely women, exquisite viands, and everything that appeals to the luscious sensuousness of a tropical race, are mingled in his worship. His daily ritual consists of eight services, in which his image is delicately bathed, anointed with essences, splendidly attired, and sumptuously fed. His great annual ceremony in Lower Bengal is the Car Festival of Jagannath, hereafter to be described. It is a
