s
at frequent intervals from the time of the Upanishads until to-day,
that rules and rites and even creeds are somehow part of the lower and
temporal order of things which the soul should transcend and leave
behind. This idea tinges the whole of Indian philosophy and
continually crops up in practice. The founder of a strange sect who
declares that nothing is necessary but faith in a particular deity and
that all ceremonies and caste observances are superfluous is not in
the popular esteem a subverter of Hinduism.

The history of both Sivaism and Vishnuism illustrates these features.
Siva begins as a wild deity of non-moral attributes. As the religious
sense develops he is not rejected like the less reputable deities of
the Jews and Arabs but remains and collects round himself other
strange wild ideas which in time are made philosophical but not
ethical. The rites of the new religion are, if not antagonistic, at
least alternative to the ancient sacrifices, yet far from being
forbidden they are performed by Brahmans and modern Indian writers
describe Siva as peculiarly the Brahman's god. Finally the Sivaite
schools of the Tamil country reject in successive stages the grosser
and more formal elements until there remains nothing but an ecstatic
and mystical monotheism. Similarly among the Vishnuites Krishna is
the centre of legends which have even less of conventional morality.
Yet out of them arises a doctrine that the love of God is the one
thing needful so similar to Christian teaching that many have supposed
it must be borrowed.

The first clear accounts of the worship of Siva and Vishnu are
contained in the epics and indicate the existence of sectarian
religion, that is to say of exclusive devotion to one or other deity.
But there is also a tendency to find a place for both, a tendency
which culminates in the composite deity Sankara Narayana already
mentioned. Many of the Puranas[457] reflect this view and praise the
two deities impartially. The Mahabharata not unfrequently does the
same but the general impression left by this poem is that the various
parts of which it consists have been composed or revised in a
sectarian spirit. The body of the work is a narrative of exploits in
which the hero Krishna plays a great part but revised so as to make
him appear often as a deity and sometimes as the Supreme Spirit. But
much of the didactic matter which has been added, particularly books
XII and XIII, breathes an equally