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Updated: May 7, 2025
Though he holds that the whole world is of God, he none the less bids men shun evil and choose the good, and the singular purity of his thoughts and style contrasts strongly with other Vishnuite works. He does not conceive of the love which may exist between the soul and God as a form of sexual passion.
It is curious that the Madhvas should have been selected for attack, for in many ways they are less opposed to Śivaites than are other Vishnuite sects but the author was clearly badly informed about the doctrines which he attacks and he was probably an old-fashioned Śivaite of the north who regarded Madhvism as a new-fangled version of objectionable doctrines.
Thus in the allegorical Vishnuite drama called Prabodhacandrodaya and written at Kalanjar near the end of the eleventh century Buddhists and Jains are represented as succumbing to the temptations of inebriety and voluptuousness.
He might seem merely a force more suited to be the subject matter of science than of religion, were not meditation on him the occupation, and union with him the goal, of many devout lives. And even when Indian deities are most personal, as in the Vishnuite sects, it will be generally found that their relations to the world and the soul are not those of the Christian God.
Many Tantras and Vishnuite works profess to be better suited to the present age than the Vedas, and innumerable treatises in the vernacular are commonly accepted as scripture. Scriptures in India are thought of as words not writings. It is the sacred sound not a sacred book which is venerated. They are learnt by oral transmission and it is rare to see a book used in religious services.
It was only natural that Râmânuja's advocacy of qualified non-duality should lead some more uncompromising spirit to affirm the doctrine of Dvaita or duality. This step was taken by Madhva Âcârya, a Kanarese Brahman who was probably born in 1199 A.D. In the previous year the great temple of Jagannatha at Puri had been completed and the Vishnuite movement was at its height.
In northern India the Śivaites are less distinct as a body and have less organization, but temples to Śiva are numerous and perhaps the majority of Brahmans and ascetics regard him as their special deity and read Śivaite rather than Vishnuite texts. But it is probably also true that they are not sectarian in the same sense as the worshippers of Kṛishṇa.
Some of the older Vishnuite writings use similar language of Śakti, under the name of Lakshmî, but in the Viśishṭâdvaita of Râmânuja and subsequent teachers there is little disposition to dwell on any feminine energy in discussing the process of evolution. Of all the Darśanas the most extraordinary is that called Raseśvara or the mercurial system.
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