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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the great Kumbh Mela at Allahabad in February, 1918. There I found that Śaṅkara's Daśnāmī sannyāsīs were more numerous than any other group of ascetics, and that next to them in numbers came the Rāmānandī Vairāgīs. This illustrates the fact that in the history of religion in North India Rāmānanda is one of the very greatest figures. Yet very little is known about him with certainty. Hitherto his date, life, sect, teaching, attitude to caste have all been uncertain. Is it possible to-day to throw any light upon his historical position?
We take his date first. The traditional dates are 1299–1410. The great age to which this makes him live is at least suspicious, so that the statement requires to be tested; and since his immediate predecessors and all his chief disciples are known, we may be able from their chronological position to realize when he lived.
page 185 note 1 Macauliffe, , The Sikh Religion, vi, 17 ff.Google Scholar
page 186 note 1 Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism, etc., 92.Google Scholar
page 186 note 2 Macmcol, , Psalms of Marāṭhā Saints, 40.Google Scholar
page 186 note 3 Op. cit., vi, 111.
page 186 note 4 a.d. 1440 is accepted by Westcott, Burn, and Rabindranath Tagore.
page 188 note 1 From Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa, III, x, 25Google Scholar, it appears likely that they also used the Rāma-tāpanīya Upanishads: Deussen, , Sechzig Upanishads, 802 ff.Google Scholar
page 190 note 1 Bhandarkar, Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism, etc., 67, n. 2.