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Rh destined to have an immense influence in moulding the future thought of India. The teaching of Brahmanism is beginning to recognise them, too. It has already divided the life of the orthodox man into three stages, or āśramas, studentship, the condition of the married householder, and thirdly the life of the hermit, or vānaprastha, to which the householder should retire after he has left a son to maintain his household; and now it is beginning to add to these as fourth stage the life of the homeless ascetic awaiting death and release. But this arrangement is for the most part a fiction, devised in order to keep the beggar-philosophers within the scheme of Brahmanic life; in reality they themselves recognise no such law.

The other current among the Aupanishadas is flowing in a very different direction. We have seen how the worship of Rudra-Śiva has grown since the old Ṛigvēdic days, and how some souls have been able to see amidst the terrors of the god a power of love and wisdom that satisfies their deepest hopes and longings, as none of the orthodox rituals can do. A new feeling, the spirit of religious devotion, bhakti as it is called, is arising among them. To them — and they number many Brahmans as well as men of other orders — Śiva has thus become the highest object of worship, Īśvara or "the Lord"; and having thus enthroned him as supreme in their hearts,