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The list is interesting as testifying to the existence of a great body of oral poetry by various authors ranging from Râmânand, who had not separated himself from orthodox Vishnuism, to Arjun, the chief of the Sikh national community. It was evidently felt that all these men had one inspiration coming from one truth and even now unwritten poems of Nânak are current in Bihar.
By his side in this later time stands his rival Çiva, the chief figure in a sect or system which shared with Vishnuism the devotion of the later Hindus. The rise of these two gods is to be referred probably to the dissatisfaction in the later times with the phenomenal character which still clung, in popular feeling, to the older deities.
Hindus and Mohammedans began to know more of each other, and in the sixteenth century under the tolerant rule of Akbar and his successors the new sects which had been growing were able to consolidate themselves. After Râmânuja and Madhva, the next great name in the history of Vishnuism, and indeed of Hinduism, is Râmânand. His date is uncertain.
And though the most rigid Brahmanism still flourishes in the Madras Presidency there is audible in the Dravidian hymns a distinct note of anti-sacerdotalism and of belief that every man by his own efforts can come into immediate contact with the Great Being whom he worships. The Vishnuism and Śivaism of the south go back to the early centuries of our era, but the chronology is difficult.
The founder of a strange sect who declares that nothing is necessary but faith in a particular deity and that all ceremonies and caste observances are superfluous is not in the popular esteem a subverter of Hinduism. The history of both Śivaism and Vishnuism illustrates these features. Śiva begins as a wild deity of non-moral attributes.
It is only after the Vedic age that they became, each for his own worshippers, undisputed Lords of the Universe. A limiting date to the antiquity of Śivaism and Vishnuism, as their cults may be called, is furnished by Buddhist literature, at any rate for north-eastern India. The Pali Piṭakas frequently introduce popular deities, but give no prominence to Vishṇu and Śiva.
His teaching was summed up in the phrase "Devotion to Kṛishṇa with observance of duty and purity of life" and in practice took the form of a laudable polemic against the licentiousness of the Vallabhis. As in most of the purer sects of Vishnuism, Kṛishṇa is regarded merely as a name of the Supreme Deity.
He sports in the soul." The idea of sport and playfulness is also prominent in Vishnuism. It is a striking feature in the cultus of both the infant and the youthful Kṛishṇa, but I have not found it recorded in the severer worship of Râma. Another feature of Hindu sects is the extravagant respect paid to Gurus or teachers. The sanctity of the Guru is an old conviction in India.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century we hear that the king of the Ahoms summoned Brahmans to his Court and adopted many Hindu rites and beliefs, and from this time onward Śâktism was patronized by most of the Assamese Rajas although after 1550 Vishnuism became the religion of the mass of the people.
In both there is a line of poet-saints followed by philosophers and teachers and in both a considerable collection of Tamil hymns esteemed as equivalent to the Veda. Perhaps Śivaism was dominant first and Vishnuism somewhat later but at no epoch did either extinguish the other.
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