2. Krishna

With the deity Vishnu is incorporated the human Krishna, and with reverence for the divine is combined love for the human to a degree known to no other religion excepting Christianity. Originally an earthly hero, Krishna becomes an incarnation of the Supreme God, the way being paved for this apotheosis by the avatars, or "descents," of the deity in the form of the fish, the tortoise, the boar, the man-lion, the dwarf, "Rama with the ax," "the moonlike Rama" (the hero of the Ramayana), and Krishna. This list is also extended to include Buddha, thus changing the opponent of Brahmanism to its friend, and Kalki, the messiah of Hinduism. According to later texts, the avatars are innumerable, and modern Vishnuites even include Christ in the series. The great incarnation, however, is that of Krishna, and about him have been woven countless legends. Some of these show so great a similarity to traditions concerning Christ, especially in the apocryphal New Testament, that many older scholars sought to trace the influence of the legends about Krishna in early Christianity; but it is now generally conceded that this view is erroneous. The dark side of Krishnaitie Vishnuism is its erotic tendency, which is fostered in the popular mind by the adventures of Krishna with the gopis, or milkmaids.

3. Sivaism

Side by side with Vishnuism was developed the rival sect of the Sivaites. Sivaism is preeminently the sect which encourages cruelest self-torture, though, on the other hand, it is marked, in the so- called "left-handed worship," by wild orgies and all manner of sexual excesses. The phallic aspect of the cult seems to be non-Aryan. It is, of course, a survival of the worship of the principle of fertility, personified usually by a nude woman who represents the Sakti, or female counterpart, of the male principle as it appears in the god.