ish to
deprive you of your devil shrines and images and worship. We will take the
leading demons which you worship and marry them to our great gods and then
give to them a place in our pantheon and a part in our worship. Come ye
also with them and we will welcome you into our temples and faith." Thus
"Meenatchi," the old and the principal demoness of the primitive cult of
that region, was married to the great god Siva and became the presiding
goddess of the great Hindu temple of Madura; and all her old worshippers
followed her into the new faith of Hinduism. So all those people are
Hindus today. And yet they have not abated one jot of their interest in
and practice of their demonolatry.

That which may be regarded as the more strictly Brahmanical development
and manifestation of Hinduism is divided, at present, into two great
cults. These are Saivism, or the worship of Siva, and Vaishnavism, or the
worship of Vishnu. These two cults, while not mutually antagonistic, are
nevertheless entirely separate--their devotees, respectively, being
satisfied with their own god and his incarnation and manifestations.

The first god of the Hindu triad (Brahma, Vishnu and Siva)--has practically
no shrines among Hindus today. His worship has been largely transferred to
his so-called sons, the Brahmans; and Siva has, in the main, absorbed all
his functions as creator. As it is only Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva,
the destroyer and recreator that have anything to do with men, the Hindus
devote themselves to these two only. Siva is the "great god," the austere
and terrible one whom the people fear. He is known chiefly through his
phallic emblem, the _linga_, which emphasizes his creative activity.
Vishnu is the benign god who has resorted to many incarnations whereby he
might free the world of demons who were worrying and destroying our race.
Siva has many manifestations; Vishnu alone has "descents" or incarnations,
some of which were in brute, and some in human, form.

These two cults obtain universally throughout India. Vaishnavism (the
worship of Vishnu) has many popular sects which wield extensive influence
throughout the country. The one established by Vallabha-Swami, in the
sixteenth century, is a worship of Krishna and is given to the indulgence
of the passions and is characterised by gross licentiousness.

The sect founded by Chaitanya in the fourteenth century is one of the most
celebrated, and is very popular in Bengal. It su