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$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter V}
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$Author{Foot Moore, George}
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$Subject{god
vishnu
religions
gods
krishna
salvation
rama
religious
india
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$Date{1913}
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Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of India
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter V

Hinduism

     The Emergence of the Popular Religions - Their Character - Salvation by
Divine Grace - Variety of Types - Vishnu and His Incarnations - Krishna - The
Bhagavad-Gita - Rama - Vishnuite Sects - Ramanujas - Controversies Over the
Doctrines of Grace - Madhvas - Vallabhas - Caitanyas - Civa - Civaite Sects -
Gods of Civa's Circle - Goddesses - Worship of the Caktis - The Triad: Brahma,
Vishnu, and Civa - Hindu Temples, Idols, Priests - Pilgrimages - Domestic
Religion - The Dead and the Hereafter - The Influence of Mohammedanism in
India - The Sikhs - The Brahma-Samaj and Other Theistic Reforming Sects.

     Our attention has thus far been fixed almost exclusively on the
philosophies of later Vedic and post-Vedic times, which all present themselves
as a way of salvation by knowledge, and on the great heresies, Jainism and
Buddhism, which - notwithstanding Buddha's antipathy to metaphysics - are also
essentially philosophies of salvation.  Wide and deep as these movements were,
they appealed by their very nature to limited circles; even when the ideas
filtered into the popular mind in various dilution and confusion, they did not
disturb, much less supplant, the inherited religions.

     In the same centuries great changes were, however, taking place, from
other causes, in these religions.  The old Vedic deities were not displaced,
but Indra and his peers had to yield the precedence to gods who in the hymns
are but figures of secondary rank, Vishnu and Civa.  How these religions got
started on their career toward supremacy is unknown. Megasthenes, who visited
India about 300 B. C. as commissioner of Seleucus Nicator to Sandracottus
(Candragupta), reports that Dionysos (Civa) was worshipped in the hills, while
the worship of Herakles (Krishna) prevailed in the Ganges valley, where he was
said to have founded, among other cities, Palimbothra (Patna), the capital of
Sandracottus' kingdom.  In the religious and didactic parts of the national
epic, the Mahabharata, the growth of which extends through several centuries
before and after the Christian era, Vishnu is the dominant figure, but poets
of the rival faith who have contributed to it exalt Civa to the highest place;
the Ramayana, which was composed perhaps in the second or third century B. C.,
has for its subject one of the incarnations of Vishnu; the Puranas, the oldest
of which are probably of at least equal antiquity, are the proper holy
scriptures of these younger religions, for which they have the same importance
as the Vedas for Brahmanism.  In the following centuries the worship of Vishnu
and of Civa spread over all India, not so much supplanting the popular
religions that were there before them as absorbing them; and to the present
day, in their innumerable branches and subdivisions, they divide between them
the two hundred millions of the population who are entered as Hindus in the
religious census.

     It is characteristic of these religions that each of them has a supreme
personal god of much more concrete individuality than the deities of the old
Vedic pantheon.  We have remarked in later hymns of the Rig-Veda a
monotheistic tendency which made Prajapati or Brihaspati-Brahmanaspati the
author of the universe; but this priority in cosmogonic speculation does not
carry with it the effective sovereignty in the actual world of nature and
history which alone leads to religious monotheism.  The sectarian religions in
time made themselves heirs of this tendency in Brahmanism, along with others,
but they did not spring from it. The monotheism of these religions is not of
the exclusive type represented by Judaism and Mohammedanism: the other gods
are subordinated to the one supreme God, or identified with him.  From this it
may be inferred with considerable probability that the supreme gods were
originally the chief gods of certain tribes, or groups of tribes,
comparatively little affected by Brahmanism, which in these centuries emerged
into political prominence.  Their victories in war or their success in
founding states brought their gods into corresponding prominence, somewhat as
the Aryan invasion of India many centuries before had made Indra the greatest
of the gods in the Rig-Veda.

     One of these gods, called by his worshippers "the great god" (Mahadeva)
or "the propitious" (Civa), was perhaps from the beginning identical with the
Vedic Rudra, whose wild and cruel character he has maintained in bloody
sacrifices and orgiastic revels.  The other is identified with Vishnu, a Vedic
deity highly honoured in the hymns, where already some of the exploits of
Indra are ascribed to him. ^1 Vishnu is a much more civilised god than Civa,
as becomes the god of more civilised tribes or regions.  Both religions
exhibit their unbrahmanical origin and character in having temples, images or
material symbols of the deity, and a temple priesthood (not necessarily of the
Brahman caste) - all at variance with the old Vedic tradition and the Brahman
law. ^2

[Footnote 1: See above, pp. 253 f.]

[Footnote 2: The law-books forbid Brahmans to serve as priests of the
non-Vedic religions.]

     By the time when they first make their entrance into literature, however,
they had already been drawn into the main current of Indian theological
development.  The cosmogonic myths and speculations are appropriated for the
sectarian gods; sectarian Upanishads echo the pantheistic note; and in the
epic the ideas of the Vedanta and the Sankhya-Yoga jostle one another.  In
revenge, the firmer theism of the new religions compels concessions both from
the absolutism of the Vedanta and the atheism of the Sankhya; the theistic
Vedanta and the deistic Yoga are witnesses to the power of the idea of a
personal god in Vishnuism and Civaism.  The Brahman priesthood, following the
movements of the times, made of the vaguely personal Brahman of some
Upanishads a god more after the type of the new religions.  The whole
religious history of India from that time on is the result of the confluence
of these two streams.

     In another more important respect the sectarian religions fell into line
with the previous development: they were doubtless in the beginning natural
religions; they may have come into prominence as tribal religions; but from
our first knowledge of them they offer not only the good gifts of God in this
life, but salvation from the round of retributive rebirths - something which
the Brahmanic religion (as distinct from the philosophies) had never
undertaken to do.  But they make the great salvation depend primarily, not on
works - that good works as well as evil involved a man in the consequences of
works, that is, in the round of rebirth, was then axiomatic - not on knowledge
of the absolute Brahman-Atman or of the transcendental monad Ego, and not on
the suppression of the activity of the soul or the extinction of the will to
be by the circumstantial methods of Jain or Buddhist monks, but on devotion to
a saving god.

     Hitherto it had been universally assumed that man must achieve his own
salvation by works or by knowledge; the new religions proclaimed salvation the
gracious gift of God to men who seek it of him in faith and love.  It is
possible that this solution of the problem of salvation which had tormented
India for centuries did not originate in either Vishnuism or Civaism, but was
adopted from a sect which worshipped its divine Saviour under some other name;
but, wherever the doctrine came from, it was these religions whose essentially
theistic character gave it meaning and power. This was a way of salvation for
the masses of men, a way they could comprehend, and by which they might hope
to attain deliverance.  The spread of the new religions, not only among the
less advanced peoples of the peninsula, but in regions and classes in which
Brahmanism, on the one hand, and Buddhism, on the other, had had the greatest
influence, is thus explained.  But, conversely, the influx of seekers of
salvation by other methods brought all these methods over into the sectarian
religions; in particular, asceticism of both the Sannyasin and the Yogin
types.

     In the course of their expansion both religions have incorporated a
multitude of local and aboriginal gods and cults, which are in theory regarded
as manifestations or forms of the one supreme God, but for the uninstructed
worshipper remain the venerable gods they were for his forefathers before this
benevolent assimilation.  Vishnuism and Civaism are thus actually vast
amorphous conglomerates of the most heterogeneous elements; monotheistic in
essence, multifarious and grotesque polytheisms in semblance, with pantheism
for a harmonising principle.  In addition to the great number of popular
religions of wider or narrower vogue which have been taken up into the two
great branches of Hinduism, hundreds of sects, founded by individual teachers,
have sprung up, flourished, split, fused, fallen into decay, and died out in
the centuries, and the same process is still going on.  Hinduism is therefore
a protean phenomenon; every attempt to describe it must confine itself to
certain salient features, but in so doing runs the risk of making an
impression of simplicity and unity which is widely remote from the truth.

     On the Vishnuite side, Vishnu is not so much worshipped in his own person
as some of his incarnations (avataras, descents), foremost among which are
Krishna and Rama.  The doctrine of incarnation is specifically Vishnuite:
"Every time that religion is in danger and that iniquity triumphs," says the
god in the Bhagavad-Gita, "I issue forth.  For the defence of the good and the
suppression of the wicked, for the establishment of justice, I manifest myself
from age to age." A complete Avatara is not a mere self-manifestation of God
in a human form, nor the production of an intermediate being, but a real
incarnation of the supreme God in a human being, who is at the same time truly
God and truly man; and this union of two natures is not dissolved by death,
but continues to eternity.  The importance of this theory is obvious: it gave
men gods who were truly and completely human, who contended and suffered in
men's behalf; gods who could be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
because they were tried in all points as we are; gods whom men could not only
revere across the awful distance between finite and infinite, but love, as
they loved their fellows, and be assured of God's responsive love.  On the
other hand, the theory made it possible to transform all the native religions
of India into orthodox Vishnuism by merely declaring the old gods incarnations
of Vishnu; even animal worship created no difficulty, for Vishnu had
repeatedly been embodied in an animal.

     The Krishna incarnation is, perhaps, the oldest, and was possibly the
starting-point of the whole theory; in any case it is religiously the most
important.  The legend of Krishna is in brief outline this: He was of the race
of the Yadavas and was born at Mathura (on the Jamna between Delhi and Agra),
his father was Vasudeva, his mother Devaka.  King Kamsa, his uncle, had been
informed by an oracle that the eighth son of this pair would kill him, and to
avert this fate put his nephews out of the world as fast as they came into it.
Krishna's parents therefore secretly conveyed him to the other side of the
river, where, in company with an older brother, Balarama, who had been saved
in a miraculous way, he was brought up by a herdsman and his wife.  The
brothers spent their youth in the forest, fighting dragons and demons and
making love to the cow-girls of the region.  The bad uncle heard reports of
the exploits of the young herdsmen, and, suspecting the truth, summoned them
to court, to his own undoing; Krishna became king of the Yadavas.  After many
victories over human and demonic enemies, he took part, as the charioteer of
Arjuna, in the internecine war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas which is
the central theme of the Mahabharata.  Many years after, strife broke out over
a trivial matter among the Yadavas and they slew one another to the last man.
Krishna himself was soon after accidentally killed by the arrow of a hunter
which wounded him in the heel, his only vulnerable point.

     Krishna's participation in the great eighteen days' battle gives occasion
for the introduction into the epic of the Bhagavad-Gita, to which we shall
return below; the sacred legend of Krishna is really the story of his infancy
and youth in the forests of Vrindavana, and the scenes of his adventures there
are the holy places of the Krishna cult.  It must be admitted that the legend
is not particularly edifying; in it Krishna is a very human, not to say
all-too-human, hero; but religious devotion is capable of extracting
nourishment from strange sources.  What is fairly clear is that in the oldest
epic Krishna was a chieftain of the Yadavas, a herdsman tribe, not an
incarnate god; and even in the story of the infancy he does not wear his
godhead all the time.

     How this hero came to be Vishnu in the flesh can only be conjectured. An
hypothesis for which a good deal can be said is that the real Krishna was not
only a warrior but a religious reformer, who taught his people to worship God
under the name Bhagavata, "the Adorable." After his death he became himself an
object of religious veneration, was regarded as an incarnation of the
Adorable. ^1 The identification with Vishnu, a Vedic deity, would be a
contribution of the Brahmans, who thus threw the mantle of orthodoxy over a
popular religion and, so to speak, asserted their right over it.  Brahmanic
theology is the source also of the sectarian doctrine that makes Krishna the
Paramatman, or Supreme Soul, one, eternal, without qualities, exempt from the
cosmic illusion (Maya), conferring upon him thus the attributes of Brahman.

[Footnote 1: See Grierson, "Bhakti-marga," Encyclopaedia of Religion and
Ethics, II, 540 f.]

     In all the voluminous sacred literature of India no book has exerted so
profound and universal an influence on the religious thought and life of
Hinduism in all its branches as the Bhagavad-Gita.  It is current in hundreds
of editions, many of which are issued by societies or individuals at small
price or for free distribution, as the New Testament is circulated among us.
When it first became known in Europe through translations it excited much
enthusiasm; Wilhelm von Humboldt declared it the most beautiful - nay, perhaps
the only truly philosophical - poem in the literature of the world.  In
theosophical circles it has been still more extravagantly lauded as the gospel
of the only true faith.  The Western reader who takes up the book without
preconceptions and tries to understand it and the secret of its power finds
it, with all its elevation of sentiment and poetic beauty of expression,
repetitious, confused, and self-contradictory - a complex of conflicting ideas
standing in unmediated juxtaposition.  This very fact is one source of its
wide-spread influence: every kind of opinion finds itself in the poem - the
orthodox Brahman his offerings and their fruits; the Vedantist his All-One;
the Sankhyan his Matter and Spirit; the Yogin his practical method; the theist
his personal God - by whatever way man prefers to seek salvation he will find
that way enounced and commended in the Gita: works, knowledge, faith, and
various combinations of these; inactive reflection and unflinching action in
the way of duty.

     In explanation of these inconsistencies it has been maintained that the
Bhagavad-Gita, like the epic in which it is embedded, represents a
transitional philosophy in which, as yet not thought out to their consequences
nor conscious of their discord, the ideas lay side by side which afterward
were developed in the great Indian systems.  To most students, however, it
appears more probable that the phenomenon is to be ascribed to additions to
the original poem and interpolations by various hands rather than to the
confused mind of the author.  And this view is confirmed by the fact that many
of the passages whose content is at variance with the main tenor of the
teaching interrupt the continuity or disturb by repetition the progress of the
thought.  Leaving aside the first arguments of Krishna, with which he urges
Arjuna to plunge into the battle and fearlessly slay or be slain - a discourse
which has no inner connection with what follows - there are two easily
distinguishable elements which are foreign to the dominant conception of the
poem, the one Vedantic pantheism, the other the Brahman commendation of the
"way of works." What remains, and what we have reason to believe to be in
substance the original poem, is purely theistic.

     In this Vishnu-Krishna is the supreme personal God.  The human soul is
eternally personal.  Its highest good is to abide for ever in a godlike
existence in the presence of God.  This great salvation is attained by love of
God and devotion to him, from which alone springs the saving knowledge of God.
Not only knowledge but morality has its root in love of God.  "That worshipper
of mine who cherishes no hate against any being, but is full only of
friendliness and compassion, who is free from self-seeking and from the
illusion of self, to whom sorrow and joy are the same, always patient and
content, given to meditation, self-controlled, resolute, with heart and mind
set on me, and loves me - he is dear to me. He before whom none are
disquieted, and who is disquieted before none, free from elation and vexation,
fear and disquiet - he also is dear to me. He who is unconcerned about the
things of this world, who is pure, impartial, untroubled, undertaking nothing
from self-interest, - he is dear to me." The gist of all the moral teaching of
the Gita is contained in what the commentators call the quintessential verse:
"He who does all his works for my sake, who is wholly devoted to me, who loves
me, who is free from attachment to earthly things, and without hate to any
being, he, O son of Pandu, enters into me."

     The conception of the universe which everywhere underlies the original
poem is pluralistic, but while in the scholastic Sankhya matter is eternal and
instinct with all the forces of evolution, thus leaving no room for a divine
author either of primeval matter or of the existing cosmic order, in the
Bhagavad-Gita, as in the sectarian theisms, the supreme God is creator as well
as saviour.  The Yoga teaching has also a large place in the poem, but its
technical methods are not so prominent as the motive and end of its discipline
- to learn to act in this world as necessity or duty demands without by action
entangling one's self in the world through the attachment of desire, or, to
express it in terms more familiar to us, to do a man's duty in this world for
God's sake, in utter disregard of the consequences to himself, either in this
life or in another.

     Second in importance only to Krishna is the incarnation of Vishnu as
Rama, and here also the same problem arises: Rama was clearly an epic hero
before he was Vishnu incarnate, and the motive of the transformation is no
more obvious in his case than in that of Krishna.  The story of Rama in the
epic Ramayana may be epitomised as follows:

     Rama was the favourite son of a king of Ayodhya (Oudh), and his
designated successor.  The king had long before promised the mother of another
son to fulfil for her one wish; she demands the throne for her son and the
banishment of Rama for fourteen years.  Accompanied by Sita, his devoted wife,
and by a brother, Lakshmana, Rama dutifully wanders forth. The father dies of
a broken heart; the brother, Bharata, summoned from a distant land to assume
the government, scorning to take advantage of his mother's intrigue, follows
Rama and tries in vain to persuade him to take the throne which is rightfully
his; but he, as a filial son, holds himself bound by his father's decree, and
concedes only that Bharata may rule as his vicegerent during the exile.  In
the forest whither they have retired, Rama and Lakshmana wage war on demonic
monsters; Rama's prowess captivates a she-demon, and she makes frank advances
to him; repulsed by both brothers, and enraged by the insult, she appeals to
her brother, the demon Ravana, a ten-headed monster whose power alarms the
very gods, further inciting him by describing the marvellous beauty of Sita.
While the brothers are abroad in the forest, Ravana seizes Sita and flies with
her through the air to his kingdom in remote Ceylon.  Having learned what has
become of her, the brothers enter into alliance with the king of the monkeys.
Hanumat, the shrewdest of the monkey tribe and at the same time the champion
broad-jumper, clears the straits at a single leap, discovers Sita, assures her
that deliverance is at hand, and returns to Rama.  A bridge of rocks, which
can still be seen, is thrown across the straits; the monkey host besieges the
capital of Ravana, and after many battles, with varying fortunes, the climax
comes in a single combat between Rama and Ravana, in which with the aid of the
gods Rama is victorious.  The purity of Sita is proved by a kind of ordeal by
fire, and the reunited pair return under escort of the whole tribe of monkeys
to Oudh, where Rama, the years of exile being at an end, is enthroned as king
amid universal rejoicing.  The seventh book, obviously a later addition to the
poem, relates how Rama allows his mind to be poisoned by suspicion of Sita and
banishes her.  Despite the assurance of the great ascetic Valmiki, he insists
on purgation by oath.  At this ceremony all the gods assist.  Sita invokes the
goddess Earth, as she has been ever faithful to her husband in thought and
word and deed, to open her bosom to receive her, and, her honour thus
vindicated, sinks into the earth, whence - as her own name Sita ("furrow")
tells - she came.

     In all the proper action of the poem, richly embellished as it is with
supernatural incident, there is no sign of the incarnate god; in the first
book, however, the gods, harassed by the demon Ravana, persuade Vishnu to be
born on earth to destroy the monster, and he chooses to be born as the son of
the good king of Kosala.  By virtue of the religious appropriation and
transformation of the legend, the Ramayana has become a favourite and
influential source of moral instruction and edification. Rama is the type of
the filial son, Sita of the faithful wife, Lakshmana of the devoted brother.
Rama is also everywhere accorded a high place among Vishnuite deities, though
the sectarians who are devoted specifically to Rama above all others are not
as numerous as the adherents of many other cults.

     The number of the "descents" of Vishnu is reckoned all the way from ten
to infinity; many of these are, however, partial incarnations, in which the
god does not descend in his full divine nature, and many are poetical figures
without further religious significance.  The founders of sects, in their
lifetime or after their death, have often been recognised by their followers
as incarnations of Vishnu, and this theory is occasionally extended to hostile
or heretical sects - for example, the Lord became embodied in Buddha in order
to lead his enemies astray to their undoing. ^1 When Vishnu descends to earth
and becomes incarnate as a man, his wife, Cri or Lakshmi, usually descends at
the same time and becomes a woman; thus the favourite wife of Krishna, Radha,
is an incarnation of Lakshmi, as is also Sita, the wife of Rama.

[Footnote 1: There is a sect, however, which worships Buddha as an incarnation
of Vishnu, in the character of a teacher of religion.]

     The Vishnuites are divided into many sects, distinguished partly by
theological or philosophical doctrines, partly by external peculiarities. One
of the most important of these branches of Vishnuism are the Ramanujas, who
claim as their founder that Ramanuja whom we have already met as a commentator
on the Vedanta-Sutras.  He taught, as we have seen, that there are three
principles, the Supreme Being, individual souls, and "non-soul" (the material
universe), which have an eternal and distinct existence.  In the periodical
involutions of the universe, human souls are latent in God, but without losing
their separate identity.  God is manifest on earth in images, in partial and
in complete incarnations, in the all-pervading spirit, and in the spirit
within man ruling the human soul.  Only when man recognises and adores the god
enshrined in his heart, the spirit that guides his own spirit, does Vishnu
take him to himself in his own heaven, where, free from fear of rebirth, he
enjoys for ever the blessedness of God's presence, of likeness to God, of
oneness with God; absorbed in God, yet without losing personal consciousness.

     Controversies in the thirteenth century divided the Ramanujas into two
branches between which there was acute controversy.  The northern school
maintains that the female counterpart of Vishnu is, like him, infinite and
uncreated, and that through worship addressed to her salvation may be
attained; the southerners hold that, though divine, she is a created and
finite being, a minister or mediator, not an author of salvation.

     The sharpest conflict, however, was over the doctrines of grace.  The
principle that salvation is the gift of God, attained neither by works nor
knowledge, but through faith and devotion to God (bhakti), raised in India the
questions which have divided Christian theologians: Is faith a free act of
man, or is it infused by God?  Is God's grace alone operative in salvation and
man purely passive, or does man co-operate with God?  The southern school were
the Augustinians or Calvinists of Vishnuism, adherents, in their own phrase,
of the "cat-hold theory," namely, that a man has no more part in his own
salvation than the helpless kitten which its mother seizes by the nape of the
neck and lugs out of danger.  The northern branch were synergists; theirs was
the "monkey doctrine" - man is like the baby monkey, which, when its mother
takes it up to carry it to a place of safety, hangs on with all the strength
of its little arms.  These doctrinal differences are now matters of historical
orthodoxy rather than of present-day concern; but the two parties still stand
obstinately apart, wearing their sectarian mark on their forehead - one foot
of Vishnu or both feet.  Each branch has a head, who claims to be the
successor of the founder in an unbroken line; like a Christian bishop, he
makes periodical visitations of the communities of his sect in different
districts, in which the boys at the age of seven or upward, and the girls
after marriage, are confirmed by being stamped on the breast and arms with the
discus and conch-shell emblems of Vishnu.

     Next in importance to the Ramanujas are the Madhvas, who are almost
confined to the south.  The founder, whose name they bear, is said to have
lived in the thirteenth century, and was peculiarly zealous in opposing the
monism of Cankara.  The Supreme Lord, he argued, is different from the human
soul, because he is the object of its obedience; a subject who obeys a king
differs from the king, and this distinct individuality is eternal. The
elements of the material universe existed from eternity in God; they were
ordered and arranged by his power and will, but not created ex nihilo; having
once emanated from God, however, the world abides for ever a distinct entity,
though not, as with Ramanuja, an independent principle. The worship of Vishnu
is threefold: branding with the symbols of the god; giving children one of his
names or titles; and venerating him in word, by truth, kindness, friendliness,
and study of the Veda; in deed by alms-giving and by saving and protecting
living things; and in thought by sympathy, zeal, and faith.

     A third sect are the followers of Vallabha, who flourished in the early
sixteenth century and embodies his teachings in a commentary on the
Bhagavata-Purana.  He drew the antiascetic consequence of a doctrine of
salvation by grace, namely, that God is not pleased by self-mortification; the
satisfaction of natural appetites and the enjoyment of the good things of this
life are not evil in themselves and are no hindrance to salvation. His
successors carried the principle to extremes; they assumed the title Maharaja
(great king), and lived in luxury and often, unless their reputation grossly
maligns them, in degrading sensuality.  The sect especially affects the
worship of Krishna the child; the images in their temples represent him as a
boy under twelve years old.  The loves of Krishna and the cow-girls are
allegorically interpreted of the yearning of the soul for union with God.  The
heads of the sect, the so-called Maharajas, are regarded as Krishna's
representatives, or even as his embodiments, and are adored as earthly gods
with incense and offerings; the water in which such a holy man has washed his
feet is drunk, the very dust he has trodden upon is eaten, as being charged
with a miraculous virtue exuding from the divine man; complete self-surrender
to the service of these gods of clay, even in the gratification of their
grossest passions, is promised a heavenly reward.  The Gosains, or teachers,
of this sect are usually married, well-dressed, and well-fed; to put body,
mind, and property at the disposal of the teacher is a fundamental article of
religion for their followers.

     The founder of another Vishnuite sect, Caitanya, was born in 1485 in
Bengal, where its adherents are still most numerous.  He drew another
inference from the doctrine of salvation by grace, namely, that "the mercy of
God regards neither tribe nor family"; all believers are equal before God
without regard to distinction of caste. ^1 Devout faith in Krishna is the only
way of salvation, as is taught in the Bhagavata-Purana.

[Footnote 1: In actual fact, this indiscriminateness does not extend beyond
the sphere of religious observances; socially the ordinary caste lines are
observed.]

     Of this devotion there are, according to Caitanya, five stages or
degrees: calm contemplation of the godhead, the attitude of a slave to his
master, personal friendship, filial affection, and, highest of all,
self-surrendering love, like that of a maiden for her lover.  Various bodily
exercises are prescribed for inducing ecstasies in which the soul loses itself
in God.  The founder of the sect passes for an incarnation of Krishna and his
two chief disciples for partial embodiments of the same deity; their
successors to the present time, like the gurus, or teachers, of other sects,
exercise great authority and are accorded little less than divine honours.
The endless repetition of Krishna's names, particularly of the name Hari,
takes a man to Vishnu's heaven, just as in the Jodo sect of Japanese Buddhists
the repetition of the name of Amida Buddha secures entrance to the Western
Paradise.