Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/440

 ‘404 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. ° [ Chap. commingled amongst some of these Vaishnava sects. In one ifistance a religious mendicant of the Vaishnava sect of Baul wes as! ed by the writer of the present treatise if he worshipped the image of Chaitanya. He said in repi. that there could be really no image of Chaitanya to be worshipped as he was merely ‘the voic’ and existed only asa name ! Thus the scattered Mahayanists,—who lay like a disbanded army, without any great leader to govern and control them, after Buddhism had been banish- ed from the soil of its birth—were now brought together and made to accept the emotional creed of love, in.its fully developed form; they were thus merged in the great community of the Vaisnavas. The Vaisnavas, while calling all people to accept their theory of spiritual love, also beat the drum of war against caste-distinction and __ priest-craft ; and the evolution of what remained of Buddhism in the country to the highly spiritual and emotional creed of the Vaisnavas came to happen as the natural sequence of this revolution; for the Buddhist masses had al. ready developed a creed of devotion being influenced by the spirit of the Pauranic revival all around, and Vaisnhavism attracted them most, as it did away with caste—now the only barrier that could pre- vent them from joining with the Buddhists. The points ‘!What distinction is there between the Buddhist রি টা Viksuand*the Vaisnava Vairagi with his shaven head’ anid liloose over coat ?. When we read Yuang Chuang'sdravels+shis description of Kugi Nagar and Benaresfordifistance, and read mythological ac- counts-of ;Buddha’s killing the demons related with