va shrine, except possibly
at Benares, where among more than an hundred shrines to Civa and his
family, Vishnu has but one; and though he will occasionally perform
service even in a heretic Jain temple he will not lower himself to
worship the Linga. Nor is it true that Civa is a patron of literature.
Like Ganeca, his son, Civa may upset everything if he be not properly
placated, and consequently there is, at the beginning of every
enterprise (among others, literary enterprises) in the Renaissance
literature, but never in the works of religion or law or in any but
modern profane literature, an invocation to Civa. But he is no more a
patron of literature than is Ganeca, or in other words, Civaism is not
more literary than is Ganecaism. In a literary country no religion is
so illiterate as Civaism, no writings are so inane as are those in his
honor. There is no poem, no religious literary monument, no Pur[=a]na
even, dedicated to Civa, that has any literary merit. All that is
readable in sectarian literature, the best Pur[=a]nas, the Divine
Song, the sectarian R[=a]m[=a]yana, come from Vishnuism. Civaism has
nothing to compare with this, except in the works of them that pretend
to be Civaites but are really not sectaries, like the Sittars and the
author of the Cvet[=a]cvatara. Civa as a 'patron of literature' takes
just the place taken by Ganeca in the present beginning of the
Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata. Vy[=a]sa has here composed the poem[42] but Ganeca
is invoked as Vighneca, 'Lord of difficulties,' to help the poet write
it out. Vy[=a]sa does the intellectual work and Ganeca performs the
manual labor. Vishnuism, in a word, is the only cultivated (native)
sectarian religion of India; and the orthodox cult, in that it is
Vedantic, lies nearer to Vishnuism than to Civaism. Why then does one
find Civa invoked by philosophy? Because monotheism in distinction
from pantheism was the belief of the wise in the first centuries after
the Christian era, till the genius of Cankara definitively raised
pantheism in alliance with orthodoxy to be the more esteemed; and
because Civa alone, when the choice lay between him and Vishnu, could
be selected as the One God. For Vishnuism was now merged with
Krishnaism, a new vulgar cult, and Civa was an old and venerated god,
long since a member of the Brahmanic pantheon. The connection between
Civaism and the S[=a]nkhya system gave it a more respectable and
archaic appearance in the eyes of the conservat