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TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
хvіі
and practice were tolerated; the broachers of new theories, and the introducers of new rites did not revile the established religion, and the adherents of the old Vedic system of elemental worship looked on the new notions as speculations they could not comprehend, and the new austerities as the exercise of a self-denial they could not reach, rather than as the introduction of heresy and schism. And such, it may be remarked in passing, is the very view taken of the opinions and practices of Bairígís and Gosáins by nine-tenths of the Hindus of the present day. After a time, however, either sectarian zeal became too strong for its possessors to abstain from taunting the followers of the old system with their obtuseness, or the others, alarmed at the prevalence of these novelties, ran with fire and sword to the rescue of the old superstitions, and thus a schism was perpetrated, which, at one particular era at least, that in which Buddhism fell and the modern Saiva system of Hinduism was established, made India at field of contention to opposing religious sects, and with the extermination of that religion which had been dominant during the period of its great
