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Updated: June 22, 2025
Brahmanism flourished in what we call the United Provinces: Buddhism arose in the regions to the east of this district and both Vishnuism and Śivaism are first heard of in the west. The earliest sect of which we have any record is that of the Bhâgavatas, who were or became Vishnuite.
But Vishnuism having first spread from the north to the south returned from the south to the north in great force, whereas the history of Śivaism shows no such reflux. Śivaism remained comparatively homogeneous, but Vishnuism gave birth from the eleventh century onwards to a series of sects or Churches still extant and forming exclusive though not mutually hostile associations.
Hence many distinguished writers err by overestimating the phase which specially interests them. For one the religious life of India is fundamentally monotheistic and Vishnuite: for another philosophic Sivaism is its crown and quintessence: a third maintains with equal truth that all forms of Hinduism are tantric.
We have not yet sufficient documents to enable us to trace the history and especially the chronology of thought in these regions but we can say that certain forms of Vishnuism, Śivaism and Buddhism were all evolved there and often show features in common. Thus in all we find the idea that the divine nature is manifested in four forms or five, if we count the Absolute Godhead as one of them .
"Sivaism, Vishnuism, and Brahmanism, the three primitive creeds, originating as they did in Thibet, in the valley of the Indus, and on the vast plains of the Ganges, ended their warfare some thousand years before the birth of Christ by adopting the Hindoo Trimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity.
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