Page:The religions of India.djvu/199



The characteristic common to the majority of these religions is the worship of new divinities exalted above all the rest, and the highly concrete and intensely personal conception of which comes out in sundry descriptions of a biographical nature. These divinities are identified either with Çiva, who is himself connected with the Vedic god Eudra, or with Vishnu ; and according: as it is the one or other of these which is raised to the supreme rank, the religions are called Qivaite or Vishnuite, and their respective followers styled Qaivas or Vaishnavas. The genesis of these religions is involved in extreme obscurity. The Vedic writings chance upon them, and, as it were, go alongside of them, during the very period of their