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Some of the epic religious ceremonies which there are barely alluded to are here described with almost the detail of a technical handbook. So the N[=a]nd[=i]ya (xix.) gives an elaborate account of the raising of a dhvaja or standard as a religious ceremony.[26] The legal rules affecting morality and especially caste-intercourse[27] show a laxity in regard to the rules as formerly preached. Even the old Puranic form of the epic is reproduced, as when M[=a]rkandeya converses again with Yudhistris, exactly as he does in the epic.[28] The duration of the ages; the fruit of sacrifices, among which are still mentioned ther[=aljas[=ulya, açvamedha, and other ancient rites;[29] the virtue of holy-places;[30] the admixture of pure pantheism with the idea of a personal creation[31]—these traits are again just those which have been seen already in the epic, nor is the addition of sections on temple-service, or other more minute details of the cult, of particular importance in a history of religious ideas.
The Pur[=a]nas for our present purpose may all be grouped with the remark that what is ancient in them is a more or less fugitive resemblance to the epic style and matter;[32] what is new is the more pronounced sectarianism with its adventitious growth of subordinate spiritualities and exaggerated miracles. Thus for instance in the Var[ra]ha Pur[=a]na there are eleven, in the Bh[=a]gavat Pur[=a]na twenty (instead of the older ten) avatars of Vishnu. So too the god of love—although K[ra]ma and his dart are recognized in the late Atharvan—as a petty spirit receives homage only in the latest S[=u]tra (as Cupid, (=A]pastamba, ii, 2. 4. 1), and in late additions to the epic he is a little god; whereas in the drama he is prominent, and in the Pur[ra]nas his cult is described at length (though to-day he has no temple). The '
mother'-fiend P[=u]tan[ra], who suckles babes to slay them, is scarcely known to the early epic, but she is a very real personality in the late epic and Pur[=a]nas.
The addition to the trinity of the peculiar inferior godhead that is advocated in any one Pur[=a]na, virtually making four divinities, is characteristic of the period.
In proportion as sectarian ardor is heightened religious tone is lowered. The Puranic votary clinging to his one idea of god curses all them that believe in other aspects of the
