Nominally Civaite are also the Southern ‘Saints,’ Sittars (Sanskrit Siddhas), but these are a modern sect whose religion has been taught them by Islam, or possibly by Christianity.[36] The extreme North and South are the districts where Civaism as a popular religion has, or had, its firmest hold, and it is for this reason that the higher religions which obtain in these districts are given to Civa.  But in reality they simply take Civa, the great god of the neighborhood, in order to have a name for their monotheistic god, exactly as missionaries among the American Indians pray to the Great Spirit, to adapt themselves to their audience’s comprehension.  In India, as in this country, they that proselyte would prefer to use their own terminology, but they wisely use that of their hearers.

We find no evidence to prove that there were ever really sectarian Civaites who did not from the beginning practice brutal rites, or else soon become ascetics of the lowest and most despicable sort.  For philosophical Civaites were never sectaries.  They cared little whether the All-god or One they argued about was called Vishnu or Civa.  But whenever one finds a true Civaite devotee, that is, a man that will not worship Vishnu but holds fast to Civa as the only manifestation of the supreme divinity, he will notice that such an one quickly becomes obscene, brutal, prone to bloodshed, apt for any disgusting practice, intellectually void, and morally beneath contempt.  If the Civaite be an ascetic his asceticism will be the result either of his lack of intelligence (as in the case of the sects to be described immediately) or of his cunning, for he knows that there are plenty of people who will save him the trouble of earning a living.  Now this is not the case with the Vishnuites.  To be sure there are Vishnuites that are no better than Civaites, but there are also strict Vishnuites, exclusively devotees of Vishnu, who are and remain pure, not brutal, haters of bloodshed, apt for no disgusting practices, intellectually admirable, and morally above reproach.  In other words, there are to-day great numbers of Vishnuites who continue to be really Vishnuites, and yet are really intelligent and moral.  This has never been the case with real Civaites.  Again, as Willams[37] has pointed out, Civaism is a cheap religion; Krishnaism is costly.  The Civaite needs for his cult only a phallus pebble, bilva leaves and water.  The Krishnaite is expected to pay heavily for leitourgiai.  But Civaism is cheap because Civaites are poor, the dregs of society; it is not adopted because it is cheap.

We think, therefore, that to describe Civaism as indifferently pantheistic or dualistic, and to argue that it must have been pantheistic a few centuries after the Christian era because Civa at that time in scholastic philosophy and among certain intellectual sects was regarded as the one god, tends to obscure the historical relation of the sects.  Without further argumentation on this point, we shall explain what in our view is necessary to a true understanding of the mutual relations between Civaites and Vishnuites in the past.