This lower aspect of Indic religions hinges historically on the relation between the accepted cults of Hinduism[12] and those of the wild tribes.  We cannot venture to make any statements that will cast upon this question more light than has been thrown by the above account of the latter cults and of their points of contact with Hinduism.  It may be taken for granted that with the entrance into the body politic of a class composed of vanquished[13] or vanquishing natives, some of the religion of the latter may have been received also.  Such, there is every reason to believe, was the original worship of Civa as Carva, Bhava, and of Krishna; in other words, of the first features of modern sectarian Hinduism, though this has been so influenced by Aryan civilization that it has become an integral part of Hindu religion.[14]

But, again, for a further question here presents itself, how much in India to-day is Aryan?  We are inclined to answer that very little of blood or of religion is Aryan.  Some priestly families keep perhaps a strain of Aryan blood.  But Hindu literature is not afraid to state how many of its authors are of low caste, how many of its priests were begotten of mixed marriages, how many formed low connections; while both legendary and prophetic (ex post facto) history speak too often of slave-kings and the evil times when low castes will reign, for any unprejudiced person to doubt that the Hindu population, excluding many pure priests but including many of the priests and the R[=a]jputs (’sons of kings’), represents Aryanhood even less than the belief of the Rig Veda represents the primitive religion; and how little of aboriginal Aryan faith is reflected in that work has been shown already.

As one reviews the post-Vedic religions of civilized India he is impressed with the fact that, heterogeneous as they are, they yet in some regards are so alike as to present, when contrasted with other beliefs, a homogeneous whole.  A certain uniqueness of religious style, so to speak, differentiates every expression of India’s theosophy from that of her Western neighbors.  What is common and world-wide in the forms of Indic faith we have shown in a previous chapter.  But on this universal foundation India has erected many individual temples, temples built after designs which are not uniform, but are all self-sketched, and therefore peculiar to herself.  In each of these mental houses of God there is revealed the same disposition, and that disposition is necessarily identical with that expressed in her profane artistry,[15] for the form of religion is as much a matter of national taste as is that which is embodied in literature, architecture, and painting.  And this taste, as expressed in religion, isolates Brahmanic and Hinduistic India, placing her apart, both from the gloom of Egypt and the grace of Greece; even as in her earliest records she shows herself individual, as contrasted with her Aryan kinsfolk.  Like Egypt, she feels her dead