This veneration of saints attains its strangest development in the sect of the Panchpiriyas or worshippers of the five Pirs.  They are treated by the last census of India as “Hindus whose religion has a strong Mohammedan flavour."[1167] There is no agreement as to who the five saints or deities are, but though the names vary from place to place they usually comprise five of the best known semi-mythical Pirs.[1168] Whoever they may be, they are worshipped under the form of a small tomb with five domes or of a simple mound of clay set in the corner of a room.  Every Wednesday the mound is washed and offerings of flowers and incense are made.  A somewhat similar sect are the Malkanas of the Panjab.  These appear to be Hindus formerly converted to Islam and now in process of reverting to Hinduism.

The influence of Hinduism on Indian Mohammedanism is thus obvious.  It is responsible for the addition to the Prophet’s creed of much superstition but also for rendering it less arid and more human.  It is harder to say how far Moslim mysticism and Sufiism are due to the same influence.  History and geography raise no difficulties to such an origin.  Arabia was in touch with the western coast of India for centuries before the time of Mohammed:  the same is true of the Persian Gulf and Bagdad, and of Balkh and other districts near the frontiers of India.  But recent writers on Sufiism[1169] have shown a disposition to seek its origin in Neoplatonism rather than in the east.  This hypothesis, like the other, presents no geographical difficulties.  Many Arab authors, such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) were influenced by Greek Philosophy:  Neoplatonists are said to have taken refuge in Persia at the Court of Nushirwan (c. A.D. 532):  the Fihrist (c. 988) mentions Porphyry and Plotinus.  If, therefore, Sufiism, early or late, presents distinct resemblances to Neoplatonism, we need not hesitate to ascribe them to direct borrowing, remembering that Neoplatonism itself contains echoes of India.  But, admitting that much in the doctrine of the Sufis can be found to the west as well as to the east of the countries where they flourished, can it be said that their general tone is Neoplatonic?  Amongst their characteristics are pantheism; the institution of religious orders and monasteries; the conception of the religious life as a path or journey; a bold use of language in which metaphors drawn from love, wine and music are freely used in speaking of divine things and, although the doctrine of metempsychosis may be repudiated as too obviously repugnant to Islam, a tendency to believe in successive existences or states of the soul.  Some of these features, such as the use of erotic language, may be paralleled in other ancient religions as well as Hinduism but the pantheism which, not content with speaking of the soul’s union with God, boldly identifies the soul with the divinity and says I am God, does not seem traceable in Neoplatonism.  And though a