y
centuries of our era. Still even in the eleventh century monasteries
were built in Mysore. Jainism had a distinguished but chequered career
in the south. It was powerful in the seventh century but subsequently
endured considerable persecution. It still exists and possesses
remarkable monuments at Sravana Belgola and elsewhere.

But the characteristic form of Dravidian religion is an emotional
theism, running in the parallel channels of Vishnuism and Sivaism and
accompanied by humbler but vigorous popular superstitions, which reveal
the origin of its special temperament. For the frenzied ecstasies of
devil dancers (to use a current though inaccurate phrase) are a
primitive expression of the same sentiment which sees in the whole world
the exulting energy and rhythmic force of Siva. And though the most
rigid Brahmanism still flourishes in the Madras Presidency there is
audible in the Dravidian hymns a distinct note of anti-sacerdotalism and
of belief that every man by his own efforts can come into immediate
contact with the Great Being whom he worships.

The Vishnuism and Sivaism of the south go back to the early centuries of
our era, but the chronology is difficult. In both there is a line of
poet-saints followed by philosophers and teachers and in both a
considerable collection of Tamil hymns esteemed as equivalent to the
Veda. Perhaps Sivaism was dominant first and Vishnuism somewhat later
but at no epoch did either extinguish the other. It was the object of
Sankara to bring these valuable but dangerous forces, as well as much
Buddhist doctrine and practice, into harmony with Brahmanism.

Islam first entered India in 712 but it was some time before it passed
beyond the frontier provinces and for many centuries it was too hostile
and aggressive to invite imitation, but the spectacle of a strong
community pledged to the worship of a single personal God produced an
effect. In the period extending from the eighth to the twelfth
centuries, in which Buddhism practically disappeared and Islam came to
the front as a formidable though not irresistible antagonist, the
dominant form of Hinduism was that which finds expression in the older
Puranas, in the temples of Orissa and Khajarao and the Kailasa at
Ellora. It is the worship of one god, either Siva or Vishnu, but a
monotheism adorned with a luxuriant mythology and delighting in the
manifold shapes which the one deity assumes. It freely used the
terminology of the Sankhya