72 SOCIAL SCIENTIST of crude details, nor metaphysical in its rarified transcendentalism. At the same time it was alive with an emotional sincerity. It spoke of an intense yearning of the heart for the divine which is in Man and not in the temple, or scriptures, in images and symbols. The worshipper addresses his songs to Man the ideal, and says: Temples and mosques obstruct thy path, and I fail to hear thy call or to move, when the clerics and priests angrily crowd round me*. He does not follow any tradition of ceremony, but only believes in love. According to him, 'Love is the magic stone that transmutes by its touch greed into sacrifice*. He goes on to say: Tor the sake of this love heaven longs to become earth and gods to become man'.1 We would deal with this concept of 'Man of My Heart'—so exquisitely summed up by Tagore, and other features of the Baul philosophy in more detail. Before such an analysis, however, the social background of the emergence of the Bauls as a distinct group would be briefly traced. The Bauls belong to the lower ranks of both the Hindu and the Muslim communities of Bengal and they are composed partly of householders and mainly of wandering mendicants. The word 'Baul1 with its Hindi variant 'Baur' may be variously derived. It may be derived from the Sanskrit word 'vatula' (affected by wind-disease i.e., crazy), from 'vyakula* (impatiently eager). Both these derivations are consistent with the apparent life style of the Bauls which denotes a group of inspired mystics with an ecstatic eagerness for a spiritual life beyond the shackles of scriptures and religious institutions. The name 'Baul', as also its cognate form 'Aul' can well be associated also with the Arabic word 'awliya' (plural of 'wall', a word originally meaning 'near' which is used for 'friend* or 'devotee') that refers to a group of perfect mystics.2 The Bauls had their basic outlook anchored in the ujan'sadhan (or ulta-sadhan) or the philosophy of 'the reverse path' which was the fundamental tenet of all the Sahajiya traditions in Bengal and elsewhere. They proceed in a direction opposite to that followed by the general run of the unaware people. They avoid all forms of institutional religion in which the natural piety of the soul is overshadowed by the useless paraphernalia of ritualism and ceremony on the one hand and pedantry and hypocrisy on the other. It is for this reason that the Bauls and other Sahajiyas call their path ulta-sadhan (i.e. 'the reverse path') and denote the process of their