But we must now give an account of the low sectaries, the miracle-mongers, jugglers,[40] and ascetic whimsicalities, which together stand under the phallic standard of Civaism.  Ancient and recent observers enumerate a sad list of them.  The devotees of the ‘highest bird’ are a low set of ascetics, who live on voluntary alms, the result of their affectation of extreme penance.  The [=U]rdhvab[=a]hus, ‘Up-arms,’ raise their arms till they are unable to lower them again.  The [=A]k[=a]camukhas, ‘Sky-facers,’ hold their faces toward the sky till the muscles stiffen, and they live thus always.  The Nakhls, ‘Nail’ ascetics, allow their nails to grow through their clenched hands, which unfits them for work (but they are all too religiously lazy to work), and makes it necessary for the credulous faithful to support them.  Some of these, like the K[=a]naph[=a]ts, ‘Ear-splitters,’ who pierce the ear with heavy rings, have been respectable Yogis in the past, but most of them have lost what sense their philosophic founders attached to the sign, and keep only the latter as their religion.  Some, such as the [=U]kharas and S[=u]kharas, appear to have no distinctive features, all of them being the ‘refuse of beggars’ (Wilson).  Others claim virtue on the strength of nudity, and subdue their passions literally with lock and key.  The ‘Potmen,’ the ‘Skull-men,’ G[=u]daras and K[=a]p[=a]likas, are distinguished, as their names imply, only by their vessels.  The former, however, are the remnant of a once thoughtful sect known by name since the sixth century, and K[=a]naph[=a]ts and K[=a]p[=a]likas both show that very likely others among these wretches are but the residue of ancient Civaite sects, who began as philosophers (perhaps Buddhists), and became only ascetic and thus degraded; for, Civa apparently has no power to make his worshippers better than himself, and he is a dirty monster, now and then galvanized into the resemblance of a decent god.

There is a well-known verse, not in Manu, but attributed to him (and for that reason quite a modern forgery),[41] which declares that Cambhu (Civa) is the god of priests; Vishnu, the god of warriors; Brahm[=a], the god of the V[=a]icyas (farmers and traders); and Ganeca, the god of slaves.  It is, on the contrary, Civa himself, not his son Ganeca, who is the ‘god of low people’ in the early literature.  It is he who ‘destroys sacrifice,’ and is anything but a god of priests till he is carefully made over by the latter.  Nowadays some Brahmans profess the Civaite faith, but they are Vishnuite if really sectarian.

No Brahman, for instance, will serve at a Civa shrine, except possibly at Benares, where among more than an hundred shrines to Civa and his family, Vishnu has but one; and though he will occasionally perform service even in a heretic Jain temple he will not lower himself to worship the Linga.  Nor is it true that Civa is a patron of literature.  Like Ganeca, his son, Civa may upset everything if he be not properly