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divinity. Blind bigotry fills the worshipper's soul. Religion becomes mere fanaticism. But there is also tolerance. Sometimes in one and the same Pur[=a]na rival forms are honored. The modern Hindu sects are in part the direct development of Puranic doctrine. But most of the sects of to-day are of very recent date, though their principles are often of respectable antiquity, as are too their sectarian signs, as well as the animals of their gods, some of which appear to be totems of the wild tribes, while others are merely objects of reverence among certain tribes. Thus the ram and the elephant are respectively the ancient beasts of Agni and Indra. Çiva has the bull; his spouse, the tiger. Earth and Skanda have appropriated the peacock, Skanda having the cock also. Yama has the buffalo (compare the Khond, wild-tribe, substitution of a buffalo for a man in sacrifice). Love has the parrot, etc; while the boar and all Vishnu's animals in avatars are holy, being his chosen beasts.[33]
EARLY SECTS.
A classification of older sects (the unorthodox) than those of the present remains to us from the works of Çankara's reputed disciple, (=A]nanda Giri, and of M[=a]dhava (=A]c[ra]rya, the former a writer of the ninth, the latter of the fourteenth century. According to the statements made by these writers there were a great number of sects, regarded as partly heterodox or wholly so, and it is interesting in examining the list of these to see that some of the epic sects (their names at least) are still in full force, while on the other hand the most important factions of to-day are not known at all, and that many sects then existed which must have been at that time of great antiquity, although now they have wholly passed away.[34] These last are indeed to the author of the critique of the sects not wholly heterodox. They are only too emphatic, in worshipping their peculiar divinity, to suit the more modern conceptions of the Hindu reviewer. But such sects are of the highest importance, for they show that despite all the bizarre bigotry of the Pur[=a]nas the old Vedic gods (as in the epic) still continue to hold their own, and had their own idols and temples apart from other newer gods. The Vedic divinities, the later additions in the shape of the god of love, the god of wealth, Kubera, [35] the heavenly bird, Garuda, the world-snake, Çesha, together with countless
