8. Later Forms of Hinduism

In the eighth and ninth centuries this degenerate Buddhism was exposed to the attacks of the great Hindu champions Kumarila and Sankara, though it probably endured little persecution in our sense of the word.  Both of them were Smartas or traditionalists and laboured in the cause not of Vishnuism or Sivaism but of the ancient Brahmanic religion, amplified by many changes which the ages had brought but holding up as the religious ideal a manhood occupied with ritual observances, followed by an old age devoted to philosophy.  Sankara was the greater of the two and would have a higher place among the famous names of the world had not his respect for tradition prevented him from asserting the originality which he undoubtedly possessed.  Yet many remarkable features of his life work, both practical and intellectual, are due to imitation of the Buddhists and illustrate the dictum that Buddhism did not disappear from India[25] until Hinduism had absorbed from it all the good that it had to offer.  Sankara took Buddhist institutions as his model in rearranging the ascetic orders of Hinduism, and his philosophy, a rigorously consistent pantheism which ascribed all apparent multiplicity and difference to illusion, is indebted to Mahayanist speculation.  It is remarkable that his opponents stigmatized him as a Buddhist in disguise and his system, though it is one of the most influential lines of thought among educated Hindus, is anathematized by some theistic sects[26].

Sankara was a native of southern India.  It is not easy to combine in one picture the progress of thought in the north and south, and for the earlier centuries our information as to the Dravidian countries is meagre.  Yet they cannot be omitted, for their influence on the whole of India was great.  Greeks, Kushans, Huns, and Mohammedans penetrated into the north but, until after the fall of Vijayanagar in 1565, no invader professing a foreign religion entered the country of the Tamils.  Left in peace they elaborated their own version of current theological problems and the result spread over India.  Buddhism and Jainism also flourished in the south.  The former was introduced under Asoka but apparently ceased to be the dominant religion (if it ever was so) in the early centuries of our era.  Still even in the eleventh century monasteries were built in Mysore.  Jainism had a distinguished but chequered career in the south.  It was powerful in the seventh century but subsequently endured considerable persecution.  It still exists and possesses remarkable monuments at Sravana Belgola and elsewhere.

But the characteristic form of Dravidian religion is an emotional theism, running in the parallel channels of Vishnuism and Sivaism and accompanied by humbler but vigorous popular superstitions, which reveal the origin of its special temperament.  For the frenzied ecstasies of devil dancers (to use a current though inaccurate phrase) are a primitive expression of the same sentiment which sees in the whole world the exulting energy and rhythmic force of Siva.  And though the most rigid Brahmanism still flourishes in the Madras Presidency there is audible in the Dravidian hymns a distinct note of anti-sacerdotalism and of belief that every man by his own efforts can come into immediate contact with the Great Being whom he worships.