There is a well-known verse, not in Manu, but attributed to him (and for that reason quite a modern forgery),[41] which declares that Çambhu (Çiva) is the god of priests; Vishnu, the god of warriors; Brahm[=a], the god of the V[=a]içyas (farmers and traders); and Ganeça, the god of slaves. It is, on the contrary, Çiva himself, not his son Ganeça, who is the 'god of low people' in the early literature. It is he who 'destroys sacrifice,' and is anything but a god of priests till he is carefully made over by the latter. Nowadays some Brahmans profess the Çivaite faith, but they are Vishnuite if really sectarian.
No Brahman, for instance, will serve at a Çiva shrine, except possibly at Benares, where among more than an hundred shrines to Çiva and his family, Vishnu has but one; and though he will occasionally perform service even in a heretic Jain temple he will not lower himself to worship the Linga. Nor is it true that Çiva is a patron of literature. Like Ganeça, his son, Çiva may upset everything if he be not properly placated, and consequently there is, at the beginning of every enterprise (among others, literary enterprises) in the Renaissance literature, but never in the works of religion or law or in any but modern profane literature, an invocation to Çiva. But he is no more a patron of literature than is Ganeça, or in other words, Çivaism is not more literary than is Ganeçaism. In a literary country no religion is so illiterate as Çivaism, no writings are so inane as are those in his honor. There is no poem, no religious literary monument, no Pur[=a]na even, dedicated to Çiva, that has any literary merit. All that is readable in sectarian literature, the best Pur[=a]nas, the Divine Song, the sectarian R[=a]m[=a]yana, come from Vishnuism. Çivaism has nothing to compare with this, except in the works of them that pretend to be Çivaites but are really not sectaries, like the Sittars and the author of the Çvet[=a]çvatara. Çiva as a 'patron of literature' takes just the place taken by Ganeça in the present beginning of the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata. Vy[=a]sa has here composed the poem[42] but Ganeça is invoked as Vighneça, 'Lord of difficulties,' to help the poet write it out. Vy[=a]sa does the intellectual work and Ganeça performs the manual labor. Vishnuism, in a word, is the only cultivated (native) sectarian religion of India; and the orthodox cult, in that it is Vedantic, lies nearer to Vishnuism than to Çivaism. Why then does one find Çiva invoked by philosophy? Because monotheism in distinction from pantheism was the belief of the wise in the first centuries after the Christian era, till the genius of Çankara definitively raised pantheism in alliance with orthodoxy to be the more esteemed; and because Çiva alone, when the choice lay between him and Vishnu, could be selected as the One God. For Vishnuism was now merged with Krishnaism, a new vulgar cult, and Çiva was an old and venerated god, long since a member of the Brahmanic pantheon. The connection between Çivaism and the S[=a]nkhya system gave it a more respectable and archaic appearance in the eyes of the conservative Brahman, while the original asceticism of Çiva undoubtedly appealed much more to Brahmanic feeling than did the sentimentalism of the Vishnuite. In the extreme North, in the ninth century, philosophy and Çivaism are nominally allied, but really sectarian Çivaism was the cult of the lowest, not of the highest classes. Many of the professed Çivaites are to-day tending to Vedantism, which is the proper philosophy of the Vishnuite; and the Çivaite sects are waning before the Vishnuite power, not only in the middle North, where the mass of the population is devoted to Vishnu, but even in Çiva's later provinces in the extreme South. The social distribution of the sectaries in the Middle Ages was such that one may assign older Vishnuism to the middle classes, and Çivaism to the highest on its philosophical and decently ascetic side, but to the lowest on its phallic and magical side.
But none of the Çivaite sects we have mentioned, imbecile as appear to be the impostors that represent them, are equal in despicable traits to the Ç[=a]ktas. These worshippers of the androgynous Çiva (or of Çakti, the female principle alone), do, indeed, include some Vishnuites among themselves, but they are originally and prevailingly Çivaite.[43] Blood-offerings and human sacrifices are a modern and an ancient Trait of Çiva-worship;[44] and the hill-tribes of the Vindhya and the classical drama show that the cult of Aghor[=i] is a Çivaite manifestation which is at once old and derived from un-Aryan sources. Aghor[=i] and all female monsters naturally associate with Çiva, who is their intellectual and moral counterpart. The older Aghoris exacted human sacrifice in honor of Devi, P[=a]rvat[=i], the wife of Çiva.[2] The adoration of the female side of a god is as old as the Rig Veda, but Çivaism has combined this cult with features probably derived from other independent local cults, such as that of P[=a]rvat[=i], the 'mountain goddess.' They are all united in the person of Çiva's wife of many names, the 'great goddess,' Mah[=a]dev[=i], the 'hard' Durg[=a], K[=a]l[=i], Um[=a], etc.[45] And it is to this ferocious she-monster that the most abject homage of the Çivaites is paid. So great is the terror inspired by Durg[=a] that they that are not Çivaites at all yet join in her festival; for which purpose, apparently, she is dubbed Vishnu's 'sister.' But it is not blood-guiltiness alone which is laid at the door of this cult. The sectarian religions have an exoteric and an esoteric side, the religion of the 'right hand' and of the 'left hand.' It is the latter (to which belong many that deny the fact) wherein centre the abominations of Çivaism; in less degree, those of Vishnuism also. Obscenity is the soul of this cult. Bestiality equalled only by the orgies of the Indic savages among the hill-tribes is the form of this 'religion.'[47] It is screened by an Orphic philosophy, for is not Nature or Illusion the female side of the Divine Male? It is screened again by religious fervor, for it is pious profligacy that prompts the rites. It is induced practically by an initial carousal and drunkenness; and this is antique, for even the old soma-feasts were to a great extent drunken revels, and the gods have got drunk from the time of the Vedas[48] to do their greatest deeds. But in practice, Çakti-worship, when unveiled, amounts to this, that men and women of the same class and family indulge in a Bacchanalian orgy, and that, as they proceed, they give themselves over to every excess which liquor and lust can prompt. A description of the different rites would be to reduplicate an account of indecencies, of which the least vile is too esoteric to sketch faithfully. Vaguely to outline one such religious festival will suffice. A naked woman, the wife of the chief priest, sits in the middle of the 'holy circle.' She represents Durg[=a], the divine female principle. The Bacchic orgy begins with hard drinking. Çiva as Bh[=a]irava, 'the dreadful,' has his human counterpart also, who must then and there pair with the impersonated Durg[=a]. The worship proper consists in the repetition of meaningless mantra syllables and yells; the worship improper, in indulgence in 'wine and women' (particularly enjoined in the rite-books called Tantras). Human sacrifice at these rites is said to be extinct at the present day.[49]
But blood-lust is appeased by the hacking of their own bodies. Garments are cast in a heap. Lots are drawn for the women's garments[50] by the men. With her whose clothes he gets each man continues the debauch, inviting incest in addition to all other excess.[51]
The older Vishnuite sects (P[=a][=n]car[=a]tras, etc.) may have had some of this filth in their make-up; but mass for mass the practices are characteristic of Çivaism and not of Vishnuism.[52] Especially Çivaite, however, is the 'mother worship,' to which reference was made in the chapter on epic Hinduism. These 'mothers' are guardian goddesses, or fiends of disease, etc. One may not claim that all Ç[=a]ktas are Çivaites, but how small a part of Vishnuism is occupied with Çakti-worship can be estimated only by surveying the whole body of worshippers of that name.
We cannot leave the lust and murder of modern Çivaism without speaking of still another sect which hangs upon the heels of K[=a]l[=i], that of the Thugs. It may, indeed, be questioned whether Çiva should be responsible for the doings of his spouse, K[=a]l[=i]. But like seeks like, and there is every historical justification in making out Çiva to be as bad as the company he keeps. Durg[=a] and K[=a]l[=i] are not vainly looked upon as Çiva's female side. So that a sect like the Thugs,[53] which worshipped K[=a]li, may, it is true, be taken out of the Çivaite sects, but only if one will split Çivaism in two and reproduce the original condition, wherein Çiva was one monster and K[=a]li was another; which is scarcely possible after the two have for centuries been looked upon as identical. With this in mind it may be granted that the Thugs payed reverence to K[=a]li, rather than to her lord. Moreover, many of them were Mohammedans; but, for our purpose, the significant fact is that when the Thugs were Hindus they were K[=a]li-Çivaites. And we believe that these secret murderers, strange as it seems, originated in a reformatory movement. As is well known, it was a religious principle with them not to spill blood.[54] They always throttled. They were, of course, when they first became known m 1799 (Sherwood's account), nothing but robbers and murderers. But, like the other Çivaite monstrosities, they regarded their work as a religious act, and always invoked K[=a]li if they were Hindus. We think it probable, therefore, that the sect originated among the K[=a]li-worshippers as a protest against blood-letting. Admitting that robbery is under Çiva's protection (Çiva is 'god of robbers'), and that K[=a]li wanted victims, a sect probably claimed that the victims should be throttled, and not bled. Not that this was necessarily a new reform. There is every reason to suppose that most of Çiva's females are aboriginal wild-tribe divinities. Now among these savages one sees at times a distinct refusal to bleed human victims. Thuggery may then have been the claim of an old conservative party, who wished to keep up the traditional throttling; though this is pure speculation, for, at the time when the sect became exposed, this means of death was merely the safest way to kill. They insisted always on being called Thugs, and scorned the name of thief. They were suppressed by 1840. Reynolds describes them as "mostly men of mild and unobtrusive manners, possessing a cheerful disposition."[55]
THE VISHNUITE SECTS.
There is a formal idealistic Çivaism, as we have shown, and there was once a dualistic Vishnuism; but in general the Vishnuite is an idealist. To comprehend the quarrels among the sects of this religion, however, it will be necessary to examine the radical philosophical differences of their founders, for one passes, in going from modern Çivaism to Vishnuism, out of ignorant superstition into philosophical religion, of which many even of the weaker traits are but recent Hinduistic effeminacy substituted for an older manly thinking.
The complex of Vishnuite sects presents at first rather a confused appearance, but we think that we can make the whole body separate itself clearly enough into its component parts, if the reader will pause at the threshold and before entering the edifice look at the foundation and the outer plan of Vedantic philosophy.
At the beginning of Colebrooke's essays on Hindu philosophy he thus describes four of the recognized systems: "The two M[=i]m[=a]ms[=a]s… are emphatically orthodox. The prior one, p[=u]rva[56] which has J[=a]imini for its founder, teaches the art of reasoning, with the express view of aiding the interpretation of the Vedas. The latter, uttara[57] commonly called Ved[=a]nta, and attributed to Vy[=a]sa (or B[=a]dar[=a]yana), deduces from the text of the Indian scriptures a refined psychology, which goes to a denial of a material world. A different philosophical system, partly heterodox, and partly conformable to the established Hindu creed, is the S[=a]nkhya; of which also, as of the preceding, there are two schools; one usually known by that name,[58] the other commonly termed Yoga."[59]