ey became,
each for his own worshippers, undisputed Lords of the Universe. A
limiting date to the antiquity of Sivaism and Vishnuism, as their
cults may be called, is furnished by Buddhist literature, at any rate
for north-eastern India. The Pali Pitakas frequently[334] introduce
popular deities, but give no prominence to Vishnu and Siva. They are
apparently mentioned under the names of Venhu and Isana, but are not
differentiated from a host of spirits now forgotten. The Pitakas have
no prejudices in the matter of deities and their object is to
represent the most powerful of them as admitting their inferiority to
the Buddha. If Siva and Vishnu are not put forward in the same way as
Brahma and Indra, the inference seems clear: it had not occurred to
anyone that they were particularly important.

The suttas of the Digha Nikaya in which these lists of deities occur
were perhaps composed before 300 B.C.[335] About that date
Megasthenes, the Greek envoy at Pataliputra, describes two Indian
deities under the names of Dionysus and Herakles. They are generally
identified with Krishna and Siva. It might be difficult to deduce
this identity from an analysis of each description and different
authorities have identified both Siva and Krishna with Dionysus, but
the fact remains that a somewhat superficial foreign observer was
impressed with the idea that the Hindus worshipped two great gods. He
would hardly have derived this idea from the Vedic pantheon, and it is
not clear to what gods he can refer if not to Siva and Vishnu. It
thus seems probable that these two cults took shape about the fourth
century B.C. Their apparently sudden appearance is due to their
popular character and to the absence of any record in art. The
statuary and carving of the Asokan period and immediately succeeding
centuries is exclusively Buddhist. No temples or images remain to
illustrate the first growth of Hinduism (as the later form of Indian
religion is commonly styled) out of the earlier Brahmanism. Literature
(on which we are dependent for our information) takes little account
of the early career of popular gods before they win the recognition of
the priesthood and aristocracy, but when that recognition is once
obtained they appear in all their majesty and without any hint that
their honours are recent.

As already mentioned, we have evidence that in the fifth or sixth
century before Christ the Vedic or Brahmanic religion was not the only
form of w