the family of Ghasi Das,
in which the priesthood of the cult was to remain hereditary.

4. Subsequent history of the Satnamis.

The creed enunciated by their prophet was of a creditable
simplicity and purity, of too elevated a nature for the Chamars
of Chhattisgarh. The crude myths which are now associated with the
story of Ghasi Das and the obscenity which distinguishes the ritual
of the sect furnish a good instance of the way in which a religion,
originally of a high order of morality, will be rapidly degraded to
their own level when adopted by a people who are incapable of living
up to it. It is related that one day his son brought Ghasi Das a fish
to eat. He was about to consume it when the fish spoke and forbade
him to do so. Ghasi Das then refrained, but his wife and two sons
insisted on eating the fish and shortly afterwards they died. [388]
Overcome with grief Ghasi Das tried to commit suicide by throwing
himself down from a tree in the forest, but the boughs of the tree
bent with him and he could not fall. Finally the deity appeared,
bringing his two sons, and commended Ghasi Das for his piety, at the
same time bidding him go and proclaim the Satnami doctrine to the
world. Ghasi Das thereupon went and dug up the body of his wife,
who arose saying '_Satnam._' Ghasi Das lived till he was eighty
years old and died in 1850, the number of his disciples being then
more than a quarter of a million. He was succeeded in the office of
high priest by his eldest son Balak Das. This man soon outraged the
feelings of the Hindus by assuming the sacred thread and parading
it ostentatiously on public occasions. So bitter was the hostility
aroused by him, that he was finally assassinated at night by a party
of Rajputs at the rest-house of Amabandha as he was travelling to
Raipur. The murder was committed in 1860 and its perpetrators were
never discovered. Balak Das had fallen in love with the daughter of
a Chitari (painter) and married her, proclaiming a revelation to the
effect that the next Chamar Guru should be the offspring of a Chitari
girl. Accordingly his son by her, Sahib Das, succeeded to the office,
but the real power remained in the hands of Agar Das, brother of Balak
Das, who married his Chitari widow. By her Agar Das had a son Ajab
Das; but he also had another son Agarman Das by a legitimate wife,
and both claimed the succession. They became joint high priests,
and the property has been partitioned between t