ascetic life wandering all over. India, holding successful disputations with various sectaries and founding new sects. The leading doctrine preached by him was a strictly unitarian one, that there is only One sole First Cause and Supreme Ruler of the universe who is to be worshipped by meditation. This was however, meant for the cultured few. To the mass of the people, to those who could not rise up to such an abstract conception of the Divinity, he allowed the observance of such rites and the worship of such deities as are prescribed by the Vedas and other authoritative works. Preachers of such divergent forms of popular faith, as the Saiva, the Vaishnava, the Saura, the Sákta, and the Gánapatya[1] claimed to be his pupils. But Saivism claims him to be its special apostle, in fact, as an incarnation of Siva himself.[2] Saivism to this day retains much of the character which he gave to it — that of a highcaste philosophical religion.
Saivinism.
In the Puránic period, it ceased to be popular. Besides Samkaráchárya,[1] the only other apostle it can boast of is Gorakhnáth, the founder of the Kánphátá Jogis[3] so called on account of their ears being bored and rings inserted in them
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Sauras are worshippers of the Sun, and the Gánapatyas, worshippers of Ganapat or Ganesa.
- ↑ Samkara's preference for Saivism is doubtful.
- ↑ For information about these and other sects referred to in the text see Wilson's "Religious sects of the Hindus."
"that in these different texts the same words always denote the same things; it is even probable that in the monumental inscriptions [of the second to the sixth century A.D.] the term Bhágavata simply means worshipper of Vishnu. "Religions of India" (Translation, 1882), p. 194.
