in other aspects of the divinity. Blind bigotry
fills the worshipper's soul. Religion becomes mere fanaticism. But
there is also tolerance. Sometimes in one and the same Pur[=a]na rival
forms are honored. The modern Hindu sects are in part the direct
development of Puranic doctrine. But most of the sects of to-day are
of very recent date, though their principles are often of respectable
antiquity, as are too their sectarian signs, as well as the animals of
their gods, some of which appear to be totems of the wild tribes,
while others are merely objects of reverence among certain tribes.
Thus the ram and the elephant are respectively the ancient beasts of
Agni and Indra. Civa has the bull; his spouse, the tiger. Earth and
Skanda have appropriated the peacock, Skanda having the cock also.
Yama has the buffalo (compare the Khond, wild-tribe, substitution of a
buffalo for a man in sacrifice). Love has the parrot, etc; while the
boar and all Vishnu's animals in _avatars_ are holy, being his chosen
beasts.[33]

EARLY SECTS.

A classification of older sects (the unorthodox) than those of the
present remains to us from the works of Cankara's reputed disciple,
[=A]nanda Giri, and of M[=a]dhava [=A]c[=a]rya, the former a writer of
the ninth, the latter of the fourteenth century. According to the
statements made by these writers there were a great number of sects,
regarded as partly heterodox or wholly so, and it is interesting in
examining the list of these to see that some of the epic sects (their
names at least) are still in full force, while on the other hand the
most important factions of to-day are not known at all; and that many
sects then existed which must have been at that time of great
antiquity, although now they have wholly passed away.[34] These last
are indeed to the author of the critique of the sects not wholly
heterodox. They are only too emphatic, in worshipping their peculiar
divinity, to suit the more modern conceptions of the Hindu reviewer.
But such sects are of the highest importance, for they show that
despite all the bizarre bigotry of the Pur[=a]nas the old Vedic gods
(as in the epic) still continue to hold their own, and had their own
idols and temples apart from other newer gods. The Vedic divinities,
the later additions in the shape of the god of love, the god of
wealth, Kubera,[35] the heavenly bird, Garuda, the world-snake, Cesha,
together with countless genii, spirits, ghosts, the Manes, the
h