ABSTRACT
Around the eighteenth to nineteenth century there was a mixed but high percentage of militant ascetics in the city of Varanasi as it is attested by W.W. Bird (senior judge of the Court of Circuit for the Division of Benares) in his Board’s Collection, 1 mentioned by Pinch. Bird estimated that warrior ascetics (who he generally calls Gosain) represented one-fourth of the male population of Varanasi, making a total number of warriors that Pinch calculates to be about 22,000–25,000 individuals. He then compares this data with that based on a house census of 1799 according to which there were approximately 10,000 Gosains and Vairāgīs permanently resident in Varanasi, since, according to him, there was a massive increase of Gosains and Vairāgīs in Varanasi at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Pinch 2012a: 80–81).
