its greatest height (or depth).
The image of the infant god is daily clothed, bathed, anointed, and
worshipped. Religious exercises have more or less of an erotic
tendency, and here, if anywhere, as one may learn from Wilson,
Williams, and other modern writers on this sect, there are almost as
great excesses as are committed among the Civaite sects. As a sect it
is an odd combination of sensual worship and theological speculation,
for they have considerable sectarian literature. The most renowned
festival of the Infant Krishna is the celebration of the stable-birth
of Krishna and of the Madonna (bearing him on her breast), but this we
have discussed already. Besides this the Jagann[=a]th procession in
Bengal and Orissa, and the great autumnal picnic called the R[=a]s
Y[=a]tra, are famous occasions for displaying Krishnaite, or, indeed,
general Vishnuite zeal. At the R[=a]s Y[=a]tra assemble musicians,
dancers, jugglers, and other joy-creating additions to the religious
feast, the ostensible reason for which is the commemoration of
Krishna's dances with the milk-maids. The devotees belong chiefly to
the wealthy middle classes. These low sects worship Krishna
with R[=a]dh[=a] (his mistress, instead of Lakshm[=i], Vishnu's wife).
Here, too, as Krishnaites rather than as Vishnuites, are found the
'left-hand' worshippers of the female power.[86]

This sensual corruption of Vishnuism, which is really not Vishnuism
but simple Krishnaism, led to two prominent reforms within the fold.
Among the Vallabhas arose in protest the Caran D[=a]s[=i]s, who have
taken from the M[=a]dhvas of the South their Ten Commandments (against
lying, reviling, harsh speech, idle talk, theft, adultery, injury to
life, imagining evil, hate, and pride); and evolved for themselves the
tenet that faith without works is dead. The same protest was made
against the Vallabhas by Sv[=a]mi N[=a]r[=a]yana. He was born about
1780 near Lucknow, and advocated a return to Vallabha's purer faith,
which had been corrupted. Probably most of the older reformers have
had much the same career as had Sv[=a]mi N[=a]r[=a]yana. Exalted by
the people, who were persuaded by his mesmeric eloquence, he soon
became a political figure, a martyr of persecution, a triumphant
victor, and then an ascetic, living in seclusion; whence he emerged
occasionally to go on tours "like a bishop visiting his diocese"
(Williams). He is worshipped as a god.[87] The sect numbers to-day a
quarter