storm-god Rudra, the “Roarer,” with certain additional features derived from other deities, especially Pushan, the guardian of flocks and bestower of prosperity, worked up therewith. The exact process of the evolution of the two deities and their advance in popular favour are still somewhat obscure. In the epic poems which may be assumed to have taken their final shape in the early centuries before and after the Christian era, their popular character, so strikingly illustrated by their inclusion in the Brahmanical triad, appears in full force; whilst their cult is likewise attested by the coins and inscriptions of the early centuries of our era. The co-ordination of the two gods in the Trimurti does not by any means exclude a certain rivalry between them; but, on the contrary, a supreme position as the true embodiment of the Divine Spirit is claimed for each of them by their respective votaries, without, however, an honourable, if subordinate, place being refused to the rival deity, wherever the latter, as is not infrequently the case, is not actually represented as merely another form of the favoured god. Whilst at times a truly monotheistic fervour manifests itself in the adoration of these two gods, the polytheistic instincts of the people did not fail to extend the pantheon by groups of new deities in connexion with them. Two of such new gods actually pass as the sons of Siva and his consort Parvati, viz. Skanda—also called Kumara (the youth), Karttikeya, or Subrahmanya (in the south)—the six-headed war-lord of the gods; and Ganese, the lord (or leader) of Siva’s troupes of attendants, being at the same time the elephant-headed, paunch-bellied god of wisdom; whilst a third, Kama (Kamadeva) or Kandarpa, the god of love, gets his popular epithet of Ananga, “the bodiless,” from his having once, in frolicsome play, tried the power of his arrows upon Siva, whilst engaged in austere practices, when a single glance from the third (forehead) eye of the angry god reduced the mischievous urchin to ashes. For his chief attendant, the great god (Mahadeva, Maheśvara) has already with him the “holy” Nandi—presumably, though his shape is not specified, identical in form as in name with Siva’s sacred bull of later times, the appropriate symbol of the god’s reproductive power. But, in this respect, we also meet in the epics with the first clear evidence of what in after time became the prominent feature of the worship of Siva and his consort all over India, viz. the feature represented by the linga, or phallic symbol.
As regards Vishnu, the epic poems, including the supplement to the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, supply practically the entire framework of legendary matter on which the later Vaishnava creeds are based. The theory of Avataras which makes the deity—also variously called Narayana, Purushottama, or Vasudeva—periodically assume some material form in order to rescue the world from some great calamity, is fully developed; the ten universally recognized “descents” being enumerated in the larger poem. Though Siva, too, assumes various forms, the incarnation theory is peculiarly characteristic of Vaishnavism; and the fact that the principal hero of the Ramayana (Rama), and one of the prominent warriors of the Mahabharata (Krishna) become in this way identified with the supreme god, and remain to this day the chief objects of the adoration of Vaishnava sectaries, naturally imparts to these creeds a human interest and sympathetic aspect which is wholly wanting in the worship of Siva. It is, however, unfortunately but too true that in some of these creeds the devotional ardour has developed features of a highly objectionable character.
Even granting the reasonableness of the triple manifestation of the Divine Spirit, how is one to reconcile all these idolatrous practices, this worship of countless gods and godlings, demons and spirits indwelling in every imaginable object round about us, with the pantheistic doctrine of the Ekam Advitiyam, “the One without a Second”? The Indian theosophist would doubtless have little difficulty in answering that question. For him there is only the One Absolute Being, the one reality that is all in all; whilst all the phenomenal existences and occurrences that crowd upon our senses are nothing more than an illusion of the individual soul estranged for a time from its divine source—an illusion only to be dispelled in the end by the soul’s fuller knowledge of its own true nature and its being one with the eternal fountain of blissful being. But to the man of ordinary understanding, unused to the rarefied atmosphere of abstract thought, this conception of a transcendental, impersonal Spirit and the unreality of the phenomenal world can have no meaning: what he requires is a deity that stands in intimate relation to things material and to all that affects man’s life. Hence the exoteric theory of manifestations of the Supreme Spirit; and that not only the manifestations implied in the triad of gods representing the cardinal processes of mundane existence—creation, preservation, and destruction or regeneration—but even such as would tend to supply a rational explanation for superstitious imaginings of every kind. For “the Indian philosophy does not ignore or hold aloof from the religion of the masses: it underlies, supports and interprets their polytheism. This may be accounted the keystone of the fabric of Brahmanism, which accepts and even encourages the rudest forms of idolatry, explaining everything by giving it a higher meaning. It treats all the worships as outward, visible signs of some spiritual truth, and is ready to show how each particular image or rite is the symbol of some aspect of universal divinity. The Hindus, like the pagans of antiquity, adore natural objects and forces—a mountain, a river or an animal. The Brahman holds all nature to be the vesture or cloak of indwelling, divine energy, which inspires everything that produces awe or passes man’s understanding” (Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Brahminism).
During the early centuries of our era, whilst Buddhism, where countenanced by the political rulers, was still holding its own by the side of Brahmanism, sectarian belief in the Hindu gods seems to have made steady progress. The caste-system, Sectarianism. always calculated to favour unity of religious practice within its social groups, must naturally have contributed to the advance of sectarianism. Even greater was the support it received later on from the Puranas, a class of poetical works of a partly legendary, partly discursive and controversial character, mainly composed in the interest of special deities, of which eighteen principal (maha-purana) and as many secondary ones (upa-purana) are recognized, the oldest of which may go back to about the 4th century of our era. It was probably also during this period that the female element was first definitely admitted to a prominent place amongst the divine objects of sectarian worship, in the shape of the wives of the principal gods viewed as their sakti, or female energy, theoretically identified with the Maya, or cosmic Illusion, of the idealistic Vedanta, and the Prakriti, or plastic matter, of the materialistic Sankhya philosophy, as the primary source of mundane things. The connubial relations of the deities may thus be considered “to typify the mystical union of the two eternal principles, spirit and matter, for the production and reproduction of the universe.” But whilst this privilege of divine worship was claimed for the consorts of all the gods, it is principally to Siva’s consort, in one or other of her numerous forms, that adoration on an extensive scale came to be offered by a special sect of votaries, the Saktas.
In the midst of these conflicting tendencies, an attempt was made, about the latter part of the 8th century, by the distinguished Malabar theologian and philosopher Sankara Acharya to restore the Brahmanical creed to Sankara. something like its pristine purity, and thus once more to bring about a uniform system of orthodox Hindu belief. Though himself, like most Brahmans, apparently by predilection a follower of Siva, his aim was the revival of the doctrine of the Brahma as the one self-existent Being and the sole cause of the universe; coupled with the recognition of the practical worship of the orthodox pantheon, especially the gods of the Trimurti, as manifestations of the supreme deity. The practical result of his labours was the foundation of a new sect, the Smartas, i.e. adherents of the smriti or tradition, which has a numerous following amongst southern Brahmans, and, whilst professing Sankara’s doctrines, is usually classed as one of the Saiva sects, its members adopting the horizontal sectarial mark peculiar to Saivas, consisting in their case of a triple line, the tripundra, prepared from the ashes of burnt cow-dung and painted on the forehead. Sankara also founded four Maths, or convents, for Brahmans; the chief one being that of Sringeri in Mysore, the spiritual head (Guru) of which wields considerable power, even that of excommunication, over the Saivas of southern India. In northern India, the professed followers of Sankara are mainly limited to certain classes of mendicants
