bordinates everything to
faith (_bhakti_) even making this more important than caste.
Contemplation, rather than ritual, was Chaitanya's pathway to salvation
and he gave supreme value to the virtue of obedience to the "guru" or
religious guide.

In South India the cult of the religious reformer, Ramanuja, who
flourished in the twelfth century, has extensive popularity. He was a man
of great thought, and his special type of Vedantic philosophy is much in
vogue today. He proclaimed the unity of God under the name of Vishnu. He
received converts from every caste. It is an interesting fact that nearly
all, in the long list of religious reformers in India, took a position of
hostility to the caste system. But it is also significant that none of
these reform movements has persisted through the centuries in that
attitude, but has fallen into line with orthodox Hinduism in absolute
submission to the caste demon.

"_Sakti_" worship has also attained great influence and extensive
predominance in many parts of India. This is the worship of the _Sakti_ or
the female half of the great deities of the land. The _Saktar_
preeminently worship _Kali_, the goddess of blood, and the other consorts
of Siva. It is a worship of power ("_Sakti_" means energy or power), and
usually power of the maleficent type. It is perhaps the lowest form of
Hinduism and easily lends itself to a gratification of the lowest passions
of men. This _tantric_ cult (the _tantras_ are the sacred books of the
Saktar) is the only one in modern Hinduism which indulges in bloody
sacrifices--_Kali_ and her sisters being satisfied by blood as by nothing
else. This attests the non-Aryan origin and character of this worship,
inasmuch as Brahmanism, since the days of Buddha, abjures all bloody
sacrifice.

Let it not be supposed, however, from the above remarks, about the
multiform and self-contradictory character of the amorphous thing called
Hinduism, that it is therefore impossible for us to understand and measure
its nature and power. For Brahmanism, through all ages, has not been
without a definite tendency, an underlying philosophy and pervasive
fundamental beliefs. It is indeed more a congeries of faiths than a simple
religion, like Christianity. And yet, amid all its hosts of contradictions
and ways of salvation and sects and cults there have sounded, as a
diapason through all the centuries, the fundamental teachings of
Vedantism. A few doctrines such as pantheism,