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centuries before it is permanently formulated, as, for example, the doctrine of special grace in a modern sect.
One more point must be noticed before we proceed to review the sects of to-day. Hindu morality, the ethical tone of the modern sects, is older than the special forms of Hindu viciousness which have been received into the cult. A negative altruism (beyond which Brahmanism never got) is characteristic of the Hindu sects. But this is already embodied in the golden rule, as it is thus formulated in the epic 'Compendium of Duty:
Not that to others should one do Which he himself objecteth to. This is man's duty in one word; All other rules may be ignored.[28]
The same is true of the 'Ten Commandments' of one of the modern sects. It is one of the strong proofs that Christian morals did not have much effect upon early Hinduism, that, although the Christian Church of St. Thomas, as is well established, was in Malabar as early as 522, [29] and Christians were in the North in the seventh century, yet no trace of the active Christian benevolence, in place of this abstention from injury, finds its way into the epic or Pur(=a]nas. But an active altruism permeates Buddhism, and one reads in the birth-stories even of a saviour Buddha, not the Buddha of love, M[=aJitreya, who was to be the next Buddha on earth, but of that M[ra]itrakanyaka, who left heaven and came to earth that he might redeem the sins of others.[30]
Whether there is any special touch between the older sects and those of modern days[31] that have their headquarters in the same districts is a question which we have endeavored to investigate, but we have found nothing to substantiate such an opinion. Buddhism retired, too early to have influence on the sects of to-day, and between Jainism and the same sects there does not seem to be any peculiar rapport even where the sect is seated in a Jain stronghold. [35]] The Jains occupy, generally speaking, the Northwest (and South), while the Buddhists were located in the Northeast and South.
