that robbery is under Civa’s protection (Civa is ’god of robbers’), and that K[=a]li wanted victims, a sect probably claimed that the victims should be throttled, and not bled.  Not that this was necessarily a new reform.  There is every reason to suppose that most of Civa’s females are aboriginal wild-tribe divinities.  Now among these savages one sees at times a distinct refusal to bleed human victims.  Thuggery may then have been the claim of an old conservative party, who wished to keep up the traditional throttling; though this is pure speculation, for, at the time when the sect became exposed, this means of death was merely the safest way to kill.  They insisted always on being called Thugs, and scorned the name of thief.  They were suppressed by 1840.  Reynolds describes them as “mostly men of mild and unobtrusive manners, possessing a cheerful disposition."[55]

THE VISHNUITE SECTS.

There is a formal idealistic Civaism, as we have shown, and there was once a dualistic Vishnuism; but in general the Vishnuite is an idealist.  To comprehend the quarrels among the sects of this religion, however, it will be necessary to examine the radical philosophical differences of their founders, for one passes, in going from modern Civaism to Vishnuism, out of ignorant superstition into philosophical religion, of which many even of the weaker traits are but recent Hinduistic effeminacy substituted for an older manly thinking.

The complex of Vishnuite sects presents at first rather a confused appearance, but we think that we can make the whole body separate itself clearly enough into its component parts, if the reader will pause at the threshold and before entering the edifice look at the foundation and the outer plan of Vedantic philosophy.

At the beginning of Colebrooke’s essays on Hindu philosophy he thus describes four of the recognized systems:  “The two M[=i]m[=a]ms[=a]s... are emphatically orthodox.  The prior one, p[=u]rva[56] which has J[=a]imini for its founder, teaches the art of reasoning, with the express view of aiding the interpretation of the Vedas.  The latter, uttara[57] commonly called Ved[=a]nta, and attributed to Vy[=a]sa (or B[=a]dar[=a]yana), deduces from the text of the Indian scriptures a refined psychology, which goes to a denial of a material world.  A different philosophical system, partly heterodox, and partly conformable to the established Hindu creed, is the S[=a]nkhya; of which also, as of the preceding, there are two schools; one usually known by that name,[58] the other commonly termed Yoga."[59]

The eldest of these systems, as we have already had occasion to state, is the dualistic S[=a]nkhya.  It was still highly esteemed in the ninth century, the time of the great Vedantist, Cankara.[60] A theistic form of this atheistic philosophy is called the Puranic S[=a]nkhya, and Pata[.n]jali’s Yoga is thoroughly theistic.  Radically opposed to the dualistic S[=a]nkhya stands the Ved[=a]nta,[61] based on the Upanishads that teach the identity of spirit and matter.