________________
Of the sub-divisions of the sub-sects that we have described, the numbers often run into scores. But either their differences are based on indifferent matters of detail in the cult and religious practice; or the new sect is distinguished from the old simply by its endeavor to make for greater holiness or purity as sub-reformers of older sects. For all the sects appear to begin as reformers, and later to split up in the process of rereformation.
Two general classes of devotees, besides these, remain to be spoken of. The Sanny[=a]sin, 'renouncer,' was of old a Brahman ascetic. Nowadays, according to Wilson, he is generally a Çivaite mendicant. But any sect may have its Sanny[=a]sins, as it may have its V[=ajir[=a]gins, 'passionless ones'; although the latter name generally applies to the Vishnuite ascetics of the South.
Apart from all these sects, and in many ways most remarkable, are the sunworshippers. All over India the sun was (and is) worshipped, either directly (as to-day by the Sauras),[91] or as an incarnate deity in the form of the priest Nimba-[=a]ditya, who is said to have arrested the sun's course at one time and to be the sun's representative on earth. Both Puranic authority and inscriptional evidence attest this more direct[92] continuance of the old Vedic cult. Some of the finest old temples of India, both North and South, were dedicated to the sun.
DEISTIC REFORMING SECTS.
We have just referred to one or two reforming sects that still hold to the sectarian deity. Among these the M[=a]dhvas, founded by (Madhva) (=A]nandat[=i]rtha, are less Krishnaite or R[=a]maite than Vishnuite,[93] and less Vishnuite than deist in general; so much so that Williams declares they must have got their precepts from Christianity, though this is open to Barth's objection that the reforming deistic sects are so located as to make it more probable that they derive from Mohammedanism. Madhva was born about 1200 on the western coast, and opposed Çankara's pantheistic doctrine of nonduality. He taught that the supreme spirit is essentially different to matter and to the
