THE SLAVE GIRL OF AGRA
ages. Vedic doctrines and sacrifices were the monopoly of the privileged Aryan castes in ancient India, while the great leveller, Buddha, and other workers proclaimed a simpler faith to the common people. For a thousand years the classes and the masses stood apart, the higher castes practising the ancient rites, the mass of the population embracing the teachings of Buddha and rejoicing in Buddist celebrations. Modern Hinduism shaped itself to these dual conditions. The faith of the high and the privileged, vigorously preached by Kumarila and Sankara, has drifted into the cult of Siva; while the more popular faith of the multitude, with its monastic system and many celebrations, has drifted into the cult of Vishnu or Krishna or Rama. Buddhism disappeared from India because it was absorbed in this latter cult, and the contest between Hinduism and Buddhism in the early centuries after Christ reappears in the contest between the Sivites and the Vishnuites in the voluminous Puranas of Mediæval India.
For deep-seated in human nature is the distinction which divides the philosophic thought of the few from the popular beliefs of the many. The creed of the Sivites in its purest form is the creed of an Impersonal Universal Being, ruling the Universe by immutable law; while the creed of the Vishnuites is that of a Personal God, tending his creatures with love, answering to their daily prayers, supplying their daily needs. If the ancient poetry of India reflected the faith of Siva, the modern literatures of India drew their first inspiration from the legends of Krishna. If ancient reformers, Kumarila and Sankara, preached a philosophic Monism, modern reformers, from Ramanuja to
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