Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/505

Rh common multitude, and his system included, for weaker minds, the contemplation of the first cause through a multitude of inferior deities, and, as various manifestations of Siva and his consort Parvati, he found a place or all the most important of the demons worshipped by the early Dravidians whom the Brahmins found on the West Coast, thus facilitating the spread of Hinduism throughout all classes. That the conversion of the Bants and Billavas, and other classes, took place at a very early date may be inferred from the fact that, though the great bulk of the Tulu Brahmins of South Canara adopted the teaching of the Vaishnavite reformer Mādhavāchārya, who lived in the thirteenth century, most of the non- Brahmin Hindus in the district class themselves as Shaivites to this day. Sankarāchārya founded the Sringēri Matha in Mysore near the borders of the Udipi taluk, the guru of which is the spiritual head of such of the Tulu Brahmins of South Canara as have remained Smarthas or adherents of the teaching of Sankarāchārya. Mādhavāchārya is believed to have been born about 1199 A.D. at Kaliānpur, a few miles from Udipi. He propounded the Dvaita or dual philosophy, repudiating the doctrine of oneness and final absorption held by ordinary vaishnavites as well as by the followers of Sankarāchārya. The attainment of a place in the highest heaven is to be secured, according to Mādhavāchārya' s teaching, not only by the renunciation of material pleasure, but by the practice of virtue in thought, word and deed. The moral code of Mādhavāchārya is a high one, and his teaching is held by some — not ordinary Hindus of course — to have been affected by the existence of the community of Christians at Kaliānpur mentioned by Cosmos Indico Pleustes in the seventh century. Mādhavāchārya placed the worship