Vivekananda &c.

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

 Palaniappa <Palaniappa at AOL.COM>

>I did not know that and I am glad surezvara was more liberal than
zankara. But
>I have a question. Since the time of surezvara, have the zankara mutts
>followed surezvara’s recommendation or zankara’s regarding who gets
inducted
>into the order? In other words, what are the percentages of kshatriyas
and
>vaizyas in the order?

I don't know exact numbers, but of the ten orders of daSanAmIs, at least
three have significant numbers of non-brAhmaNa monks. See histories
written by Jadunath Sarkar or Sadananda Giri, or the more comprehensive
PhD dissertation by Wade Dazey from UC, Santa Barbara (1987). You won't
find historical instances of non-brAhmaNa heads of the principal maThas,
but there are many 'minor' maThas with non-brAhmaNa lineages.
Contingents of kshatriya monks used to be standard parts of most Rajput
armies.

The Ramakrishna orders, who are derived from the daSanAmIs in lineage,
have large numbers of non-brAhmaNa monks. In fact, Vivekananda, whose
name started this discusion, was himself a kshatriya by birth.

Vidyasankar

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