Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/208

i62 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY For hundreds of years, then, before this emergence of Shiva as the main Hindu conception of God (which for a time he was), devout souls had loved Buddha and hastened with a special devotion to give alms to sadhus, without on that account suspecting for a moment that they were of any but the accepted Arya-Vedic household of faith. Less dependence on the great powers that dwelt beneath the mountain springs ; less sense of the mystery of serpent and forest ; an ever-deepening reverence for the free soul for the sadhu, for the idea of renunciation, this was all of which anyone was conscious. And yet in this subtle change of centres, history was being made ; a new period was coming to the birth. Verily, those were great days in India between 500 B.C. and A.D. 200 or thereabouts. For the national genius had things all its own way, and in every home in the land the little was daily growmg less, and the real and the universal were coming more and more prominently into view. Those were probably the days of Gitas made in imitation of the Buddhist Suttas. And this fact alone, if it be true, will give us some hint as to the preoccupation of the period with great thought.

" Thou that art knowledge itself,

Pure, free, ever the witness, Beyond all thought and beyond all qualities, To thee the only true Guru

My Salutation : Shiva Guru ! Shiva Guru ! Shiva Guru ! "