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282 attempt will be made to study the religious activities of the Vishnuvite Alvars from a purely historical stand-point, and special care will be taken to substantiate statements from the literary, epigraphical and other evidences.

All over the continent of India Vishnu has been worshipped in some form or other; but mostly in his two latest incarnations as Rama and Krishna. He is an Aryan deity transplanted into the Dravidian soil by successive bands of Aryan settlers, and it would therefore be highly interesting to give at the beginning a brief outline of the origin and development of this cult in the land of its origin. The main reasons for prefacing this essay with such a resume are, (1) to compare its growth both in the Aryavarta and in the land of the Tamils, and (2) to guard ourselves in the course of the ensuing discussion against certain misapprehensions that might be raised by the orthodox traditions of the Tamil Vaishnavas.

History of religions in India tells us that the worship of Vishnu is as old as the Vedas, and that the doctrines of this sect had already passed through at least two stages—the Vedic and the Puranic—before they attained the present form. During the Vedic period the religion of the Indo-Aryans consisted in the adoration of the elemental gods like Indra, Varuna, Agni and Marut, and in the offering of sacrifices to Agni or the fire-god. Vishnu was then a solar deity ‘and held an inferior position as a friend or comrade of Indra. This epoch