The name applied to the post-Buddhistic development of native religion in India. Sects: The elasticity of Brahmanism, which enabled it to survive the attacks of the pantheism of the Upanishads, carried it through the more open assaults of the great heretical lead ers Buddha and Mahavira (see Brahmanism; Buddhism; Jainism). The waning power of the older gods and the rise of a host of new divinities were not due to any influence of Buddha or Ma havira, but were apparently the result of contact with non-Aryan aboriginal tribes. Early Hinduism finds its chief literary monument in the great epic of India, the Mahabharata. This poem, the com position of which probably lasted from the fourth or fifth century B.e. to 500 A.D., shows I. The a new force. as the key-note of India's Mahabha- religion. This is found in asceticism, rata and or self-immolation, which sways all Puranas. powers of heaven and of earth. Out of this has arisen the distinctively Indian class of fakirs, professional religious mendi cants, who represent the grotesque and outrt; sides of asceticism, and number perhaps two millions at the present. The only element of asceticism which is absolutely requisite to gain distinction as a fakir is the ability to endure terrific self-torture. The gods, to protect themselves, frequently sent celes tial nymphs to seduce such ascetics as threatened the divinities by the power acquired through self castigation, and the temptation was by no means always unsuccessful. Yet true religion might con stantly be found both among the Brahmans and among the ascetics and hermits dwelling in the forest depths. Beside the Mahabharata stand the Ramayana, an essentially Vishnuite poem, and the eighteen poems called Puranas, which are of comparatively recent date, the latest being composed perhaps as late as 1500 A.D. Unlike the epic, which is non-sectarian, the Puranas are avowedly written in honor of the deities who form the eponymous gods of the two great Hindu sects which characterized that period and have survived as active forces to the present day. The mythology of these minor epics still awaits thorough investigation and study, for in the poems lie a mass of legends of the gods which represent popular Brahmanism at a later period than the Mahabharata. Yet the great epic of India can not be dismissed without an allusion to what is, for Occidentals, its most famous episode, the Bhagavadgita, the "Divine Song" of Vishnuite Brahmanism. Before the great battle of Kurukshetra, which marks the culmination of the epic, the god Vishnu, acting as the charioteer of Arjuna, addresses the hero in a hymn proclaiming himself as the sole godhead. It is the Upanishad of Hinduism, but it differs from the early Brahmanic Upanishads in its teaching of salvation by " loving faith " (bhakti) . Herein is sounded the key-note of Vishnuitic sectarianism which is to-day the most potent religious factor in India.
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