1 226 PANJAB CASTES.
2 and exercising a wholesome influence upon the people of the neigliboni'hoo J.
3 Such are many at least of the Bairagis and Gosains. Some of the orders
4 do not keep up regular monasteries, but travel aliout begging and visiting
5 their disciples ; though even here they generally have permanent head-
6 quarters in some village, or at some shrine or temple where one of their
7 order officiates. So too the monasterial orders travel about among their
8 disciples and collect the offerings upon which they partly subsist. There is
9 an immense number of these men whose influence is almost wholly for
10 good. Some few of the orders are professedly celibate, though even among
11 them the inile is seldom strictly observed ; but most of the Hindu orders
12 are divided into the Sanyogi and Viyogi sections of which the latter only
13 takes vows of celibacy, while among the Musalmau orders celibacy is
14 seldom even professed. Such however as live in monasteries are generally
15 if not allways celibate. The professed ascetics are called Sadhs if Hindu
16 and Pirs if Musalman. The Hindus at any rate have their neophytes who
17 are undergoing probation before admission into the order, and these men are
18 called Chela. But besides these both Hindu and Musalman ascetics have their
19 disciples, known respectively as Sewal' and Murid, and these latter belong to the
20 order as much as do their spiritual guides ; that is to say a Kayath clerk may
21 be a Bairagi or Pathan soldier a Chishti, if they have committed their
22 spiritual direction respectively to a Bairagi and Chishti guru and pir. Now
23 it is not probable that such men have returned the name of the order as
24 their caste, though this may occasionally have happened ; and it is certain
25 that none of them h<ave returned themselves as Faqir. Thus so far the
26 orders are made up of men who have voluntarily entered them, renouncing
27 caste and worldly pursuits. But these men maiTy and have hindi or carnal
28 children ; while their nadi or spiritual children, the chelas just mentioned,
29 may after admission to the order return to their homes. And it often
30 happens that the descendants whether carnal or spiritual of a Bairagi, for
31 instance, will grow into a separate caste known by the name of Bairagi,
32 but having no connection wliatever save by origin with the order of that
33 name. Such men would return their caste as Bairagi, and will have been
34 included under Faqir. How far this custom is general I cannot say ; but
35 we have just discussed one instance of it in the case of the Chishti of
36 Montgomery, and I know of villages held by Bairagis under precisely similar
37 circumstances in Karnal.
38 I have said that many of the members of these orders are pious,
39 respectable men whose influence is wholly for good. But this is far from
40 being the case with all the orders. Many of them are notoriously pro-
41 fligate debauchers, who wander about the country seducing women, extorting
42 alms by the threat of cui-ses, and relying on their saintly character for
43 protection. Still even these men are members of an order which they have
44 deliberately entered, and have some right to the title which they bear. But
45 a very large portion of the class who are included under the name Faqir
46 are ignorant men of low caste, without any acquaintance with even the
47 general outlines of the religion they jjrofess, still less with the special tenets
48 of any particular sect, who borrow the garb of the regular orders and
49 wander about the country living on the alms of the credulous, often hardly
50 knowing the names of the orders to which the external signs they wear
51 would show them to belong. Such men are mere beggars, not ascetics ;
52 and though theii' numbers are unfortunately large, we have no means of