1. The founder.
Swāmi-Nārāyan Sect.[1]—This, one of the most modern Vaishnava sects, was founded by Sahajānand Swāmi, a Sarwaria Brāhman, born near Ajodhia in the United Provinces in A.D. 1780. At an early age he became a religious mendicant, and wandered all over India, visiting the principal shrines. When twenty years old he was made a Sādhu of the Rāmānandi order, and soon nominated as his successor by the head of the order. He preached with great success in Gujarāt, and though his tenets do not seem to have differed much from the Rāmānandi creed, his personal influence was such that his followers founded a new sect and called it after him. He proclaimed the worship of one sole deity, Krishna or Nārāyana, whom he identified with the sun, and apparently his followers held, and he inclined to believe himself, that he was a fresh incarnation of Vishnu. It is said that he displayed miraculous powers before his disciples, entrancing whomsoever he cast his eyes upon, and causing them in this mesmeric state (Samādhi) to imagine they saw Sahajānand as Krishna with yellow robes, weapons of war, and other characteristics of the God, and to behold him seated as chief in an assembly of divine beings.