but the first place in philosophy belonged to
the severe pantheism of Sankara which, in contrast to this riotous
exuberance of legend and sculpture, sees the highest truth in one Being
to whom no epithets can be applied.

In the next epoch, say the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, Indian
thought clearly hankers after theism in the western sense and yet never
completely acquiesces in it. Mythology, if still rampant according to
our taste, at least becomes subsidiary and more detachable from the
supreme deity, and this deity, if less anthropomorphic than Allah or
Jehovah, is still a being who loves and helps souls, and these souls are
explained in varying formulae as being identical with him and yet
distinct.

It can hardly be by chance that as the Hindus became more familiar with
Islam their sects grew more definite in doctrine and organization
especially among the Vishnuites who showed a greater disposition to form
sects than the Sivaites, partly because the incarnations of Vishnu offer
an obvious ground for diversity. About 1100 A.D.[27] the first great
Vaishnava sect was founded by Ramanuja. He was a native of the Madras
country and claimed to be the spiritual descendant of the early Tamil
saints. In doctrine he expressly accepted the views of the ancient
Bhagavatas, which had been condemned by Sankara, and he affirmed the
existence of one personal deity commonly spoken of as Narayana or
Vasudeva.

From the time of Sankara onwards nearly all Hindu theologians of the
first rank expounded their views by writing a commentary on the Brahma
Sutras, an authoritative but singularly enigmatic digest of the
Upanishads. Sankara's doctrine may be summarized as absolute monism
which holds that nothing really exists but Brahman and that Brahman is
identical with the soul. All apparent plurality is due to illusion. He
draws a distinction between the lower and higher Brahman which perhaps
may be rendered by God and the Godhead. In the same sense in which
individual souls and matter exist, a personal God also exists, but the
higher truth is that individuality, personality and matter are all
illusion. But the teaching of Ramanuja rejects the doctrines that the
world is an illusion and that there is a distinction between the lower
and higher Brahman and it affirms that the soul, though of the same
substance as God and emitted from him rather than created, can obtain
bliss not in absorption but in existence near him.

It is r