North "Indo-Aryan," in spite of his assumption that both were indigenous forms borrowed by the Brahmans, and therefore of non-Aryan origin. This misleading description has unfortunately become a fixed archæological tradition, to the utter confusion of students of Indo-Aryan civilisation.
Saiva temples are mostly "Dravidian," or South Indian, simply because the Saivas are in the great majority in the South, while in the North, where Vaishnavas predominate, the Vaishnava form of temple is the characteristic one.
The geographical distribution of the two main sects of modern Hinduism is in all probability due to the political disturbances caused by the inroads of the Huns and by the Muhammadan conquest. Saivism is and was the especial cult of the Brahmans; Vaishnavism of the Kshatriya or fighting caste. When the Huns, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols carried fire and sword into Northern India, thousands of peaceful Brahman monks and ascetics, whose monasteries were destroyed or desecrated, must have sought refuge south of the Vīndhyas, the mountain range which separates the Dekkan from Northern India. The warlike Kshatriyas remained to fight for the Aryan cause in Aryāvarta. Thus the spires of the Vaishnava temples in Northern India testify to the gallant struggle made by the Kshatriya clans in defence of their holy land, while the lofty pyramids of South Indian temples are witness to the spread of Aryan culture among the Dravidian races.
Saiva or Brahman propaganda began to make headway about the sixth century a.d., when a minister of one of the Pāndyan kings of Madura overthrew the pandits of Hīnayāna Buddhism in the philosophical contests which were the favourite recreation of Indo-
