North. The foundation of
the new empire was not laid till the permanent occupation of the
Punj[=a]b and annexation of Lahore in 1022-23. In the thirteenth
century all Hindustan acknowledged the authority of the slave sultan
of Delhi.[7] Akbar died in 1605. By the end of the century the Mogul
rule was broken; the Mahratta princes became imperial. It is now just
in this period of Mohammedan power when arise the deistic reforming
sects, which, as we have shown, were surrounded with deists and
trinitarians. Here, then, we draw the line across the inner
development of India's religions, with
Kab[=i]r, N[=a]nak, D[=a]du, and perhaps even Basava. In the
philosophy of the age that succeeds the epic there are but two phases
of religion, pantheism for the wise, a more or less deistic polytheism
for the vulgar[8] (in isolated cases may be added the monotheism of
certain scholastic philosophers); and so Indic religion continued till
the advent of Islamism. Nevertheless, though under Mohammedan
influence,[9] the most thoughtful spirits of India received monotheism
and gave up pantheism, yet was the religious attitude of these
thinkers not averse from that taken by the Sankyan philosophers and by
the earlier pantheists. From a philosophical point of view one must,
indeed, separate the two. But all these, the Unitarian Hariharaist,
the real pantheist of the Upanishads, who completed the work of the
Vedic quasi-pantheist, and the circle that comprises Kab[=i]r,
N[=a]nak, and D[=a]du, were united in that they stood against
encircling polytheism. They were religiously at one in that they gave
up the cult of many divinities, which represented respectively
nature-worship and fiend-worship (with beast-worship), for the worship
of one god. Therefore it is that, while native advance stops with the
Mohammedan conquest, one may yet claim an uninterrupted progress for
the higher Indic religion, a continual elevation of the thoughts of
the wise; although at the same time, beside and below this, there is
the circle of lower beliefs that continually revolves upon itself. For
in the zooelatry[10] and polytheism that adores monsters to-day
it is difficult to see a form of religion higher in any respect than
that more simple nature-polytheism which first obtained.[11]

This lower aspect of Indic religions hinges historically on the
relation between the accepted cults of Hinduism[12] and those of the
wild tribes. We cannot venture to make any stateme