h the Christian Church of St.
Thomas, as is well established, was in Malabar as early as 522,[29]
and Christians were in the North in the seventh century, yet no trace
of the active Christian benevolence, in place of this abstention from
injury, finds its way into the epic or Pur[=a]nas. But an active
altruism permeates Buddhism, and one reads in the birth-stories even
of a saviour Buddha, not the Buddha of love, M[=a]itreya, who was to
be the next Buddha on earth, but of that M[=a]itrakanyaka, who left
heaven and came to earth that he might redeem the sins of others.[30]

Whether there is any special touch between the older sects and those
of modern days[31] that have their headquarters in the same districts
is a question which we have endeavored to investigate, but we have
found nothing to substantiate such an opinion. Buddhism retired, too
early to have influence on the sects of to-day, and between Jainism
and the same sects there does not seem to be any peculiar rapport even
where the sect is seated in a Jain stronghold.[35]] The Jains occupy,
generally speaking, the Northwest (and South), while the Buddhists
were located in the Northeast and South. So Civaism may be loosely
located as popular in the Northeast and South, while Vishnuism has its
habitat rather in the jain centres of the Northwest (and South).

We have mentioned in the preceding chapter the sects of a few
centuries ago, as these have been described in Brahmanic
literature.[33] The importance, and even the existence of some of the
sects, described in the _Conquest of Cankara_, has been questioned,
and the opinion has been expressed that, since they are described only
to be exposed as heretical, they may have been creations of fancy,
imaginary sects; the refutation of their principles being a _tour de
force_ on the part of the Brahmanic savant, who shows his acumen by
imagining a sect and then discountenancing it. It does not, indeed,
seem to us very probable that communities were ever formed as 'Agnis'
or 'Yamas,' etc, but on the other hand, we think it is more likely
that sects have gone to pieces without leaving any trace than that
those enumerated, explained, and criticised should have been mere
fancies.[46]] Moreover, in the case of some of these sects
there are still survivors, so that _a fortiori_ one may presume the
others to have existed also, if not as sects or communities, yet as
bodies professing faith in Indra or Yama, etc. The sects with