t does not hesitate to represent it in paint and
stone.

As we have seen, the change which came over Buddhism was partly due to
foreign influences and no doubt they affected most Indian creeds. But
the prodigious amplification of Hinduism was mainly due to the
absorption of beliefs prevalent in Indian districts other than the homes
of the ancient Brahmans. Thus south Indian religion is characterized
when we first know it by its emotional tone and it resulted in the
mediaeval Sivaism of the Tamil country. In another region, probably in
the west, grew up the monotheism of the Bhagavatas, which was the parent
of Vishnuism.

Hinduism may be said to fall into four principal divisions which are
really different religions: the Smartas or traditionalists, the
Sivaites, the Vishnuites and the Saktas. The first, who are still
numerous, represent the pre-buddhist Brahmans. They follow, so far as
modern circumstances permit, the ancient ritual and are apparent
polytheists while accepting pantheism as the higher truth. Vishnuites
and Sivaites however are monotheists in the sense that their minor
deities are not essentially different from the saints of Roman and
Eastern Christianity but their monotheism has a pantheistic tinge.
Neither sect denies the existence of the rival god, but each makes its
own deity God, not only in the theistic but in the pantheistic sense and
regards the other deity as merely an influential angel. From time to
time the impropriety of thus specially deifying one aspect of the
universal spirit made itself felt and then Vishnu and Siva were adored
in a composite dual form or, with the addition of Brahma, as a trinity.
But this triad had not great importance and it is a mistake to compare
it with the Christian trinity. Strong as was the tendency to combine and
amalgamate deities, it was mastered in these religions by the desire to
have one definite God, personal inasmuch as he can receive and return
love, although the Indian feeling that God must be all and in all
continually causes the conceptions called Vishnu and Siva to transcend
the limits of personality. This feeling is specially clear in the growth
of Rama and Krishna worship. Both of these deities were originally
ancient heroes, and stories of love and battle cling to them in their
later phases. Yet for their respective devotees each becomes God in
every sense, God as lover of the soul, God as ruler of the universe and
the God of pantheism who is all