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The Minar, a memo rial of the Muslim conquest, dates from about A. D. 1230. commentaries of the brothers Sayana and Madhava are of great value. BHAKTI r33 Yet Hinduism was too deeply rooted in the hearts of the people to be destroyed by adversity. Though changes necessarily arose as a result of the conquest, it is surprising how little alteration was produced in the religion. Indeed it would not be too much to say that the crushing of the Hinduism of the temple and the scholar led to the out- bursting of a simpler and more helpful faith from the heart of the people itself. 35. SUBRAHMANYA TEMPLE AT TANJORE (Photograph by Wiele & Klein.) 87. The Muslims were later in penetrating into the south. So there we find good architecture still being built, e. g. the temple of Subrahmanya at Tanjore, one of the finest examples of the Dravidian style in existence. In the six teenth and seventeenth centuries the greater temples were enclosed with enormous walls and were frequently used as forts. The gopurams of this period are of enormous height, but their sculpture is of stucco, and the style is everywhere flamboyant and decadent. '34 OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY 88. The religious movements of the north during these centuries fall into three groups, Ramaite, Krishnaite, and deistic ; yet all the sects have a great many points in common, inherited from earlier forms of Vaishnavism. They believe in one personal God who is full of love and pity for those who worship Him : yet all, except the followers of Kablr, recognize the other gods, and worship idols ; they all hold that the human soul is a por tion of the Divine, and that it will eter nally retain its indi viduality ; they offer salvation to men of all castes, demanding faith and bhakti to ward the Lord ; they use the vernaculars instead of Sanskrit ; they exalt the gnru, the religious teacher, to a place of great authority ; they use a mantra, i. e. a 36. GOFURAM AT KUMBAKONAM secret phrase or pass- Photograph by Wiele and Klein.) word, which is whis pered by the guru to the novice on initiation ; they partake of a sacramental meal ; and each sect has its own order of ascetics as well as its congregation of the laity. 89. Of the Ramaite leaders we shall mention the three most notable. Ramananda was a native of South India and was a leader in the S'risampradaya, the church of Rama- nuja ; but in consequence of a quarrel he left the sect and migrated to North India. He gave up all the exclusiveness BHAKTI of Ramanuja, and also his troublesome restrictions about food. He preached in Hindi, and admitted all castes, even the lowest, to his fold. ' He had twelve apostles, among whom were a Rajput, a currier, a barber, and a Muham- madan weaver.' The whole bhakti movement in the north owes a great debt to Ramananda. He belongs to the first half of the fifteenth century ; yet his theology and practice show no trace of Muhammadan influ ence. Tulsl Das belonged to the church of Ramananda. His activity was contem poraneous with the reign of the great Akbar and of his son Jahangir. He alone among the bhakti leaders did not found a sect. He preferred to influence all his fellow - countrymen ; and he has won his reward ; for the mil lions of the people ol Upper India to-day acknowledge Tulsl Das as their guide. The teaching which he imparted as he wandered over the land he gave permanent form to in the Ramacharit Manas, ' the Lake of the deeds of Rama '. It is a modern Rama- yana in the sense that it recounts the old story, but it is shot through and through with bhakti theology and with the healthy moral spirit of the poet. The language is Eastern Hindi. Those who know say that he produced 'some of FLAMBOYANT PILLARS IN DRAVIDIAN TEMPLE 136 OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY the most beautiful poetry which has found birth in Asia'; and the common people of the north show by their devotion to his great work that they agree with this high praise. Nabha Das, a contemporary of Tulsl Das, wrote the Bhakta Mala, or 'Garland of Devotees', a series of brief biographies of the chief bhakti saints. 90. The Krishnaite books in Sanskrit noticed in our last chapter were followed up by some very interesting vernacular literature in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Vidyapati wrote many lyrics in the dialect of Bihar : Chaixli Das did similar work in Bengali ; and in Rajputana, Mira Bal, a prin cess, wrote beautiful songs, which are extremely popular, in the Braj Bhasha. This is the dialect of the country round Mathura, where Krishna's life among the cowherds is fabled to have been lived. In this very country the first fully systematized form of popular Krishnaism was founded in the early part of the sixteenth century by a Brahman from the south named Vallabhacharya. In his teaching and among his followers the sensual and sexual elements which are present in all the later Krishnaite mythology come to the front and bear their evil harvest. His son-in-law Chai- tanya preached the faith of Krishna in Bengal, using the lyrics of Vidyapati to stir the emotions of the people. He was essentially a revivalist appealing to the feelings by music, singing, and devotional excitement. In his own time the nobler elements of the religion were in the ascen dant \ but soon immorality crept in and degraded the movement seriously. The most famous of Vallabhacharya's successors was Sur Das, the blind poet of Agra. His work is called the Sur-Sdgar, and consists of exquisite songs on the legend of Krishna in the Braj dialect. Namdev and Tukaram, who were both Marathas, were Krishnaites. Tukaram's poems are greatly treasured. All the modern Bhagavatas reckon themselves to belong BHAKTI i37 to one or other of four Mother- churches, though there are numerous subdivisions. Though both Ramaites and Krishnaites accepted men of every caste as members of their sects, yet they never dreamed of doing away with caste. (See section 64.) 91. The deistic movement springs from Kabir, the Mul.iam- madan weaver who was one of the apostles of Ramananda. Here Muhammadan influence makes itself distinctly felt. For, though Kabir was a disciple of Ramananda, though he calls God by the name Rama, and has Vedantic ideas, he will have nothing to do with the doctrine of incarnations, and he condemns idolatry and caste with unsparing voice. Yet he is recognized as an incarnation himself by his fol lowers, the KabTrpanthls ; and his polemic against caste has had but little effect : the Hindu and the Muhammadan members of his Church have separate monasteries and have little in common except their devotion to their Master ; and the Hindu members are almost all Sudras. His pithy cou plets and epigrammatic sayings are still very popular. Dadu, a sixteenth-century cotton-cleaner of Ahmadabad, leader of the Dadupanthis, got his theology from Kabir. No direct influence exerted by Kabir, however, is equal to the indirect influence which has arisen through the founding of the Sikh sect in the Punjab by his disciple Nanak. From the beginning the chief guru of the church exercised large power ; and the tenth guru, named Govind, took such steps as transformed the sect into a military order and finally created a great and warlike nation. But no guru succeeded Govind, and their sacred book, the (ira>ith, is now the centre of the faith. It is a most interesting collection of varied material, some of it very trivial, some very valuable. Much of it was written by the gurus, but there are also hymns and sayings from all the great bhakti teachers of the north. The most important part, the Adi Granth or 'Original 138 OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY Book ', was compiled by Guru Arjun in 1601. Govind Singh added a great deal of new matter in 1696, and the whole is now called the Granth. Nanak condemned idolatry, and Guru Govind abolished caste within the military order. Yet caste is now rife among the Sikhs ; and the Granth is treated like an idol in their central shrine, the Golden Temple of Amritsar. It is a most extraordinary fact that the theology of Kablr was meant to unite Hindus and Muhammadans in the wor ship of the one God ; yet the most implacable hatred arose between the Sikhs and the Muhammadans ; and from that hatred came the Khalsa, the Sikh military order, which created the fiercest enemies the Mughal emperors had. It is also most noteworthy that caste has found its way back into every Hindu sect that has disowned it.