The same is true of the ‘Ten Commandments’ of one of the modern sects.  It is one of the strong proofs that Christian morals did not have much effect upon early Hinduism, that, although the Christian Church of St. Thomas, as is well established, was in Malabar as early as 522,[29] and Christians were in the North in the seventh century, yet no trace of the active Christian benevolence, in place of this abstention from injury, finds its way into the epic or Pur[=a]nas.  But an active altruism permeates Buddhism, and one reads in the birth-stories even of a saviour Buddha, not the Buddha of love, M[=a]itreya, who was to be the next Buddha on earth, but of that M[=a]itrakanyaka, who left heaven and came to earth that he might redeem the sins of others.[30]

Whether there is any special touch between the older sects and those of modern days[31] that have their headquarters in the same districts is a question which we have endeavored to investigate, but we have found nothing to substantiate such an opinion.  Buddhism retired, too early to have influence on the sects of to-day, and between Jainism and the same sects there does not seem to be any peculiar rapport even where the sect is seated in a Jain stronghold.[35]] The Jains occupy, generally speaking, the Northwest (and South), while the Buddhists were located in the Northeast and South.  So Civaism may be loosely located as popular in the Northeast and South, while Vishnuism has its habitat rather in the jain centres of the Northwest (and South).

We have mentioned in the preceding chapter the sects of a few centuries ago, as these have been described in Brahmanic literature.[33] The importance, and even the existence of some of the sects, described in the Conquest of Cankara, has been questioned, and the opinion has been expressed that, since they are described only to be exposed as heretical, they may have been creations of fancy, imaginary sects; the refutation of their principles being a tour de force on the part of the Brahmanic savant, who shows his acumen by imagining a sect and then discountenancing it.  It does not, indeed, seem to us very probable that communities were ever formed as ‘Agnis’ or ‘Yamas,’ etc, but on the other hand, we think it is more likely that sects have gone to pieces without leaving any trace than that those enumerated, explained, and criticised should have been mere fancies.[46]] Moreover, in the case of some of these sects there are still survivors, so that a fortiori one may presume the others to have existed also, if not as sects or communities, yet as bodies professing faith in Indra or Yama, etc.  The sects with which we have to deal now are chiefly those of this century, but many of these can claim a definite antiquity of several centuries at least.  They have been described by Wilson in his famous Sketch, and, in special cases, more recently and more fully by Williams’ and other writers.

THE CIVAITES.