it is included under Veda.  Hence we may conclude that when this passage was written (that is probably before 400 A.D. and perhaps about the beginning of our era) there were two popular religions ranking in public esteem with the philosophic and ritual doctrines of the Brahmans.  The Mahabharata contains a hymn[497] which praises Siva under 1008 names and is not without resemblance to the Bhagavad-gita.  It contains a larger number of strange epithets, but Siva is also extolled as the All-God, who asks for devotion and grants grace.  At the close of the hymn Siva says that he has introduced the Pasupata religion which partly contradicts and partly agrees with the institutions of caste and the Asramas, but is blamed by fools.[498]

These last words hint that the Pasupatas laid themselves open to criticism by their extravagant practices, such as strange sounds and gestures.[499] But in such matters they were outdone by other sects called Kapalikas or Kalamukhas.  These carried skulls and ate the flesh of corpses, and were the fore-runners of the filthy Aghoris, who were frequent in northern India especially near Mount Abu and Girnar a century ago and perhaps are not yet quite extinct.  The biographers of Sankara[500] represent him as contending with these demoniac fanatics not merely with the weapons of controversy but as urging the princes who favoured him to exterminate them.

Hindu authorities treat the Pasupatas as distinct from the Saivas, or Sivaites, and the distinction was kept up in Camboja in the fourteenth century.  The Saivas appear to be simply worshippers of Siva, who practice a sane ritual.  In different parts of India they have peculiarities of their own but whereas the Vaishnavas have split up into many sects each revering its own founder and his teaching, the Saivas, if not a united body, present few well-marked divisions.  Such as exist I shall notice below in their geographical or historical connection.[501] Most of them accept a system of theology or philosophy[502] which starts with three principles, all without beginning or end.  These are Pati or the Lord, that is Siva:  Pasu, or the individual soul:  Pasa or the fetter, that is matter or Karma.[503] The task of the soul is to get free of its fetters and attain to the state of Siva.  But this final deliverance is not quite the same as the identity with Brahman taught by the Vedanta:  the soul becomes a Siva, equal to the deity in power and knowledge but still dependent on him rather than identical with him.[504]

Peculiar to Saiva theology is the doctrine of the five kancukas[505] or envelopes which limit the soul.  Spirit in itself is free:  it is timeless and knows no restrictions of space, enjoyment, knowledge and power.  But when spirit is contracted to individual experience, it can apprehend the universe only as a series of changes in time and place:  its enjoyment, knowledge and power are cramped and curtailed by the limits of personality.  The terminology of the Saivas is original but the theory appears to be an elaboration of the Pancaratra thesis that the soul is surrounded by the sheath of Maya.