Page:The Folk-songs of Southern India.djvu/34

Rh larger and more sacred shrines. While the lower castes flock to the temple festivals, the Brahman discourses in his house upon the Vedanta, or criticizes the doctrines of Sancaracharya, Ramanuja and Madhvacharya–systems in which idolatry and polytheism have as small a share as in the works of Berkely, Mill, or Spinosa. Even the purohita, formerly the highest dignitary in the Aryan economy, is now degraded into an inferior,–one who must minister to the ignorance and superstition of the crowd.

The Brahmans of Southern India are divided into three great sects—those who believe that there is but one soul, in short, that everything is God, (adwaita) - those who believe that there are two souls, God and Man, (dwaita)—and those who take a medium course and believe that there is but one soul, which in man and created things is somewhat different from the divine soul, (visishta adwaita). To those who are not Bralimans these philosophical distinctions are almost unknown, and men worship a being to whom they give the puranic names of Vishnu and Siva, Krishna and Hanuman. While so many names are given and acknowledged by every Hindu, as if each referred to a separate deity, each person acknowledges but one as his own God and ascribes to him all the attributes of the Godhead.

It will be seen, however, that while the philosophy of the schools is unknown to the crowd, the strong tendency of the popular mind is towards monotheism of a character not unlike that of the Visishta Adwaita