good as the gods. In justice it must be said that
despite distortions and monstrous accretions the real teaching of Gotama
did not entirely disappear even in Magadha and Tibet.

8. _Later Forms of Hinduism_

In the eighth and ninth centuries this degenerate Buddhism was exposed
to the attacks of the great Hindu champions Kumarila and Sankara, though
it probably endured little persecution in our sense of the word. Both of
them were Smartas or traditionalists and laboured in the cause not of
Vishnuism or Sivaism but of the ancient Brahmanic religion, amplified by
many changes which the ages had brought but holding up as the religious
ideal a manhood occupied with ritual observances, followed by an old age
devoted to philosophy. Sankara was the greater of the two and would have
a higher place among the famous names of the world had not his respect
for tradition prevented him from asserting the originality which he
undoubtedly possessed. Yet many remarkable features of his life work,
both practical and intellectual, are due to imitation of the Buddhists
and illustrate the dictum that Buddhism did not disappear from India[25]
until Hinduism had absorbed from it all the good that it had to offer.
Sankara took Buddhist institutions as his model in rearranging the
ascetic orders of Hinduism, and his philosophy, a rigorously consistent
pantheism which ascribed all apparent multiplicity and difference to
illusion, is indebted to Mahayanist speculation. It is remarkable that
his opponents stigmatized him as a Buddhist in disguise and his system,
though it is one of the most influential lines of thought among educated
Hindus, is anathematized by some theistic sects[26].

Sankara was a native of southern India. It is not easy to combine in one
picture the progress of thought in the north and south, and for the
earlier centuries our information as to the Dravidian countries is
meagre. Yet they cannot be omitted, for their influence on the whole of
India was great. Greeks, Kushans, Huns, and Mohammedans penetrated into
the north but, until after the fall of Vijayanagar in 1565, no invader
professing a foreign religion entered the country of the Tamils. Left in
peace they elaborated their own version of current theological problems
and the result spread over India. Buddhism and Jainism also flourished
in the south. The former was introduced under Asoka but apparently
ceased to be the dominant religion (if it ever was so) in the earl