Siva has at all times been the favourite god of the Brahmans,[5] and his worship is accordingly more widely extended than that of his rival, especially in southern India. Indeed there is hardly a village in India which cannot boast of a shrine dedicated to Siva, and containing the emblem of his reproductive power; for almost the only form in which the “Great God” is adored is the Linga, consisting usually of an upright cylindrical block of marble or other stone, mostly resting on a circular perforated slab. The mystic nature of these emblems seems, however, to be but little understood by the common people; and, as H. H. Wilson remarks, “notwithstanding the acknowledged purport of this worship, it is but justice to state that it is unattended in Upper India by any indecent or indelicate ceremonies, and it requires a rather lively imagination to trace any resemblance in its symbols to the objects they are supposed to represent.” In spite, however, of its wide diffusion, and the vast number of shrines dedicated to it, the worship of Siva has never assumed a really popular character, especially in northern India, being attended with scarcely any solemnity or display of emotional spirit. The temple, which usually stands in the middle of a court, is as a rule a building of very moderate dimensions, consisting either of a single square chamber, surmounted by a pyramidal structure, or of a chamber for the linga and a small vestibule. The worshipper, having first circumambulated the shrine as often as he pleases, keeping it at his right-hand side, steps up to the threshold of the sanctum, and presents his offering of flowers or fruit, which the officiating priest receives; he then prostrates himself, or merely lifts his hands—joined so as to leave a hollow space between the palms—to his forehead, muttering a short prayer, and takes his departure. Amongst the many thousands of Lingas, twelve are usually regarded as of especial sanctity, one of which, that of Somnath in Gujarat, where Siva is worshipped as “the lord of Soma,” was, however, shattered by Mahmud of Ghazni; whilst another, representing Siva as Visvesvara, or “Lord of the Universe,” is the chief object of adoration at Benares, the great centre of Siva-worship. The Saivas of southern India, on the other hand, single out as peculiarly sacred five of their temples which are supposed to enshrine as many characteristic aspects (linga) of the god in the form of the five elements, the most holy of these being the shrine of Chidambaram (i.e. “thought-ether”) in S. Arcot, supposed to contain the ether-linga. According to Pandit S. M. Natesa (Hindu Feasts, Fasts and Ceremonies), “the several forms of the god Siva in these sacred shrines are considered to be the bodies or casements of the soul whose natural bases are the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether. The apprehension of God in the last of these five as ether is, according to the Saiva school of philosophy, the highest form of worship, for it is not the worship of God in a tangible form, but the worship of what, to ordinary minds, is vacuum, which nevertheless leads to the attainment of a knowledge of the all-pervading without physical accessories in the shape of any linga, which is, after all, an emblem. That this is the case at Chidambaram is known to every Hindu, for if he ever asks the priests to show him the God in the temple he is pointed to an empty space in the holy of holies, which has been termed the Akasa, or ether-linga.” But, however congenial this refined symbolism may be to the worshipper of a speculative turn of mind, it is difficult to see how it could ever satisfy the religious wants of the common man little given to abstract conceptions of this kind.
From early times, detachment from the world and the practice of austerities have been regarded in India as peculiarly conducive to a spirit of godliness, and ultimately to a state of ecstatic communion with the deity. On these Mendicant orders. grounds it was actually laid down as a rule for a man solicitous for his spiritual welfare to pass the last two of the four stages (āśrama) of his life in such conditions of renunciation and self-restraint. Though there is hardly a sect which has not contributed its share to the element of religious mendicancy and asceticism so prevalent in India, it is in connexion with the Siva-cult that these tendencies have been most extensively cultivated. Indeed, the personality of the stern God himself exhibits this feature in a very marked degree, whence the term mahāyogī or “great ascetic” is often applied to him.
Of Saiva mendicant and ascetic orders, the members of which are considered more or less followers of Sankara Acharya, the following may be mentioned: (1) Daṇḍīs, or staff-bearers, who carry a wand with a piece of red cloth, containing the sacred cord, attached to it, and also wear one or more pieces of cloth of the same colour. They worship Siva in his form of Bhairava, the “terrible.” A sub-section of this order are the Dandi Dasnamis, or Dandi of ten names, so called from their assuming one of the names of Sankara’s four disciples, and six of their pupils. (2) Yogis (or popularly, Jogis), i.e. adherents of the Yoga philosophy and the system of ascetic practices enjoined by it with the view of mental abstraction and the supposed attainment of superhuman powers—practices which, when not merely pretended, but rigidly carried out, are only too apt to produce vacuity of mind and wild fits of frenzy. In these degenerate days their supernatural powers consist chiefly in conjuring, sooth-saying, and feats of jugglery, by which they seldom fail in imposing upon a credulous public. (3) Sannyasis, devotees who “renounce” earthly concerns, an order not confined either to the Brahmanical caste or to the Saiva persuasion. Those of the latter are in the habit of smearing their bodies with ashes, and wearing a tiger-skin and a necklace or rosary of rudraksha berries (Elaeocarpus Ganitrus, lit. “Rudra’s eye”), sacred to Siva, and allowing their hair to grow till it becomes matted and filthy. (4) Parama-hamsas, i.e. “supreme geese (or swans),” a term applied to the world-soul with which they claim to be identical. This is the highest order of asceticism, members of which are supposed to be solely engaged in meditating on the Brahma, and to be “equally indifferent to pleasure or pain, insensible of heat or cold, and incapable of satiety or want.” Some of them go about naked, but the majority are clad like the Dandis. (5) Aghora Panthis, a vile and disreputable class of mendicants, now rarely met with. Their filthy habits and disgusting practices of gross promiscuous feeding, even to the extent of eating offal and dead men’s flesh, look almost like a direct repudiation of the strict Brahmanical code of ceremonial purity and cleanliness, and of the rules regulating the matter and manner of eating and drinking; and they certainly make them objects of loathing and terror wherever they are seen.
On the general effect of the manner of life led by Sadhus or “holy men,” a recent observer (J. C. Oman, Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India, p. 273) remarks: “Sadhuism, whether perpetuating the peculiar idea of the efficiency of austerities for the acquisition of far-reaching powers over natural phenomena, or bearing its testimony to the belief in the indispensableness of detachment from the world as a preparation for the ineffable joy of ecstatic communion with the Divine Being, has undoubtedly tended to keep before men’s eyes, as the highest ideal, a life of purity, self-restraint, and contempt of the world and human affairs. It has also necessarily maintained amongst the laity a sense of the righteous claims of the poor upon the charity of the more affluent members of the community. Moreover, sadhuism, by the multiplicity of the independent sects which have arisen in India, has engendered and favoured a spirit of tolerance which cannot escape the notice of the most superficial observer.”
An independent Saiva sect, or, indeed, the only strictly Saiva sect, are the Vīra Śaivas, more commonly called Lingayats (popularly Lingaits) or Lingavats, from their practice of wearing on their person a phallic emblem Lingayats. of Siva, made of copper or silver, and usually enclosed in a case suspended from the neck by a string. Apparently from the movable nature of their badge, their Gurus are called Jangamas (“movable”). This sect counts numerous adherents in southern India; the Census Report of 1901 recording nearly a million and a half, including some 70 or 80 different, mostly endogamous, castes. The reputed founder, or rather reformer, of the sect was Basava (or Basaba), a Brahman of the Belgaum district who seems to have lived in the 11th or 12th century. According to the Basava-purana he early in life renounced his caste and went to reside at Kalyana, then the capital of the Chalukya kingdom, and later on at Sangamesvara near Ratnagiri, where he was initiated into the Vīra Śaiva faith which he subsequently made it his life’s work to propagate. His doctrine, which may be said to constitute a kind of reaction against the severe sacerdotalism of Sankara, has spread over all classes of the southern community, most of the priests of Saiva temples there being adherents of it; whilst in northern India its votaries are only occasionally met with, and then mostly as mendicants, leading about a neatly caparisoned bull as representing Siva’s sacred bull Nandi. Though the Lingayats still show a certain animosity towards the Brahmans, and in the Census lists are accordingly classed as an independent group beside the Hindus, still they can hardly be excluded from the Hindu community, and are sure sooner or later to find their way back to the Brahmanical fold.
Vishnu, whilst less popular with Brahmans than his rival, has from early times proved to the lay mind a more attractive object of adoration on account of the genial and, so to speak, romantic character of his mythical personality. Avatars. It is not, however, so much the original figure of the god himself that enlists the sympathies of his adherents as the additional elements it has received through the theory of periodical “descents” (avatāra) or incarnations applied to this deity. Whilst the Saiva philosophers do not approve of the notion of incarnations, as being derogatory to the dignity of the deity, the Brahmans have nevertheless thought fit to adopt it as apparently a convenient expedient for bringing certain tendencies of popular worship within the pale of their system, and probably also for counteracting the Buddhist doctrines; and for this purpose Vishnu would obviously offer himself as the most attractive figure in the Brahmanical trinity. Whether the incarnation theory started from the original solar nature of the god suggestive of regular visits to the world of men, or in what other way it may have originated, must remain doubtful. Certain, however, it is that at least one of his Avatars is clearly based on the Vedic conception of the sun-god, viz. that of the dwarf who claims as much ground as he can cover by three steps, and then gains the whole universe by his three mighty strides. Of the ten or more Avatars, assumed by different authorities, only two have entered to any considerable extent into the religious worship of the people, viz. those of Rama (or Ramachandra) and Krishna, the favourite heroes of epic romance. That these two figures would appeal far more strongly to the hearts and feelings of the people, especially the warlike Kshatriyas,[6] than the austere Siva is only what might have been expected; and, indeed, since the time of the epics their cult seems never to have lacked numerous adherents. But, on the other hand, the essentially human nature of these two gods would naturally tend to modify the character of the relations between worshipper and worshipped, and to impart to the modes and forms of adoration features of a more popular and more human kind. And accordingly it is exactly in connexion with these two incarnations of Vishnu, especially that of Krishna, that a new spirit was infused into the religious life of the people by the sentiment of fervent devotion to the deity, as it found expression in certain portions of the epic poems, especially the Bhagavadgita, and in the Bhagavata-purana (as against the more orthodox Vaishnava works of this class such as the Vishnu-purana), and was formulated into a regular doctrine of faith in the Sandilya-sutra, and ultimately translated into practice by the Vaishnava reformers.
The first successful Vaishnava reaction against Sankara’s reconstructed creed was led by Ramanuja, a southern Brahman of the 12th century. His followers, the Ramanujas, or Sri-Vaishnavas as they are usually called, worship Ramanujas. Vishnu (Narayana) with his consort Sri or Lakshmi (the goddess of beauty and fortune), or their incarnations Rama with Sita and Krishna with Rukmini. Ramanuja’s doctrine, which is especially directed against the Linga-worship, is essentially based on the tenets of an old Vaishnava sect, the Bhagavatas or Pancharatras, who worshipped the Supreme Being under the name of Vasudeva (subsequently identified with Krishna, as the son of Vasudeva, who indeed is credited by some scholars with the foundation of that monotheistic creed). The sectarial mark of the Ramanujas resembles a capital U (or, in the case of another division, a Y), painted with a white clay called gopi-chandana, between the hair and the root of the nose, with a red or yellow vertical stroke (representing the female element) between the two white lines. They also usually wear, like all Vaishnavas, a necklace of tulasī, or basil wood, and a rosary of seeds of the same shrub or of the lotus. Their most important shrines are those of Srirangam near Trichinopoly, Mailkote in Mysore, Dvaraka (the city of Krishna) on the Kathiawar coast, and Jagannath in Orissa; all of them decorated with Vishnu’s emblems, the tulasi plant and salagram stone. The Ramanuja Brahmans are most punctilious in the preparation of their food and in regard to the privacy of their meals, before taking which they have to bathe and put on woollen or silk garments. Whilst Sankara’s mendicant followers were prohibited to touch fire and had to subsist entirely on the charity of Brahman householders, Ramanuja, on the contrary, not only allowed his followers to use fire, but strictly forbade their eating any food cooked, or even seen, by a stranger. On the speculative side, Ramanuja also met Sankara’s strictly monistic theory by another recognizing Vishnu as identical with Brahma as the Supreme Spirit animating the material world as well as the individual souls which have become estranged from God through unbelief, and can only attain again conscious union with him through devotion or love (bhakti). His tenets are expounded in various works, especially in his commentaries on the Vedanta-sutras and the Bhagavadgita. The followers of Ramanuja have split into two sects, a northern one, recognizing the Vedas as their chief authority, and a southern one, basing their tenets on the Nalayir, a Tamil work of the Upanishad order. In point of doctrine, they differ in their view of the relation between God Vishnu and the human soul; whilst the former sect define it by the ape theory, which makes the soul cling to God as the young ape does to its mother, the latter explain it by the cat theory, by which Vishnu himself seizes and rescues the souls as the mother cat does her young ones.
Madhva Acharya, another distinguished Vedanta teacher and founder of a Vaishnava sect, born in Kanara in A.D. 1199, was less intolerant of the Linga cult than Ramanuja, but seems rather to have aimed at a reconciliation of Madhvas. the Saiva and Vaishnava forms of worship. The Madhvas or Madhvacharis favour Krishna and his consort as their special objects of adoration, whilst images of Siva, Parvati, and their son Ganesa are, however, likewise admitted and worshipped in some of their temples, the most important of which is at Udipi in South Kanara, with eight monasteries connected with it. This shrine contains an image of Krishna which is said to have been rescued from the wreck of a ship which brought it from Dvaraka, where it was supposed to have been set up of old by no other than Krishna’s friend Arjuna, one of the five Pandava princes. Followers of the Madhva creed are but rarely met with in Upper India. Their sectarial mark is like the U of the Sri-Vaishnavas, except that their central line is black instead of red or yellow. Madhva—who after his initiation assumed the name Anandatirtha—composed numerous Sanskrit works, including commentaries on the Brahma sutras (i.e. the Vedanta aphorisms), the Gita, the Rigveda and many Upanishads. His philosophical theory was a dualistic one, postulating distinctness of nature for the divine and the human soul, and hence independent existence, instead of absorption, after the completion of mundane existence.
The Ramanandis or Ramavats (popularly Ramats) are a numerous northern sect of similar tenets to those of the Ramanujas. Indeed its founder, Ramananda, who probably flourished in the latter part of the 14th century, Ramats. according to the traditional account, was originally a Sri-Vaishnava monk, and, having come under the suspicion of laxity in observing the strict rules of food during his peregrinations, and been ordered by his superior (Mahant) to take his meals apart from his brethren, left the monastery in a huff and set up a schismatic math of his own at Benares. The sectarial mark of his sect differs but slightly from that of the parent stock. The distinctive features of their creed consist in their making Rama and Sita, either singly or conjointly, the chief objects of their adoration, instead of Vishnu and Lakshmi, and their attaching little or no importance to the observance of privacy in the cooking and eating of their food. Their mendicant members, usually known as Vairagis, are, like the general body of the sect, drawn from all castes without distinction. Thus, the founder’s twelve chief disciples include, besides Brahmans, a weaver, a currier, a Rajput, a Jat and a barber—for, they argue, seeing that Bhagavan, the Holy One (Vishnu), became incarnate even in animal form, a Bhakta (believer) may be born even in the lowest of castes. Ramananda’s teaching was thus of a distinctly levelling and popular character; and, in accordance therewith, the Bhakta-malā and other authoritative writings of the sect are composed, not in Sanskrit, but in the popular dialects. A follower of this creed was the distinguished poet Tulsidas, the composer of the beautiful Hindi version of the Ramayana and other works which “exercise more influence upon the great body of Hindu population than the whole voluminous series of Sanskrit composition” (H. H. Wilson).
The traditional list of Ramananda’s immediate disciples includes the name of Kabir, the weaver, a remarkable man who would accordingly have lived in the latter part of the 15th century, and who is claimed by both Hindus Kabir. and Moslems as having been born within their fold. The story goes that, having been deeply impressed by Ramananda’s teaching, he sought to attach himself to him; and, one day at Benares, in stepping down the ghat at daybreak to bathe in the Ganges, and putting himself in the way of the teacher, the latter, having inadvertently struck him with his foot, uttered his customary exclamation “Ram Ram,” which, being also the initiatory formula of the sect, was claimed by Kabir as such, making him Ramananda’s disciple. Be this as it may, Kabir’s own reformatory activity lay in the direction of a compromise between the Hindu and the Mahommedan creeds, the religious practices of both of which he criticized with equal severity. His followers, the Kabir Panthis (“those following Kabir’s path”), though neither worshipping the gods of the pantheon, nor observing the rites and ceremonial of the Hindus, are nevertheless in close touch with the Vaishnava sects, especially the Ramavats, and generally worship Rama as the supreme deity, when they do not rather address their homage, in hymns and otherwise, to the founder of their creed himself. Whilst very numerous, particularly amongst the low-caste population, in western, central and northern India, resident adherents of Kabir’s doctrine are rare in Bengal and the south; although “there is hardly a town in India where strolling beggars may not be found singing songs of Kabir in the original or as translated into the local dialects.” The mendicants of this creed, however, never actually solicit alms; and, indeed, “the quaker-like spirit of the sect, their abhorrence of all violence, their regard for truth and the inobtrusiveness of their opinions render them very inoffensive members of the state” (H. H. Wilson). The doctrines of Kabir are taught, mostly in the form of dialogues, in numerous Hindi works, composed by his disciples and adherents, who, however, usually profess to give the teacher’s own words.