Out

of this Brahmanism was evolved Buddhism, which prevailed for about a you sand years, and was in time superseded, in India, by a reformed Neo-Brahmanism, which however fell back to the sloughs of modern Hinduism, This Neo-Brahmanism (after about 400.c.) created the Puranik literature with its still vaster mythology. Glimpses only of ancient tribes, heroes, gods, and events, are therein discerned by the diligent student. Brahma is the beginning of all; and the table (p. 382) may serve to aid others in tracing the confused genealogies of the Mahabharata, and other later works. It was prepared from the gleanings of many years of study concerning the subject—gleanings from books, temple texts, pictures, and explanations by Brahmans. The modern Hinduism springs from Vedik studies, which evolved Vedanta philosophies maturing even in the days of early Buddhist supremacy. The Purainik philosophy finally drove the latter faith out of India, where to-day we find a vast Pantheon, and polytheism mingled with some sy q é o 5 a= |: Se Fd i o 4 ~ | Me pal $F: a 1 fi Sei 3g ee 3 3 al: eos # = ES cee2 ai Pbk aen sal Serer 42] ~63| |g | a54 pee z é i: Pe: ea ea: % i E ar rerreeetcrcesan ee g gageaaé g2e22 3 3 fee: ag = Panes “ue g gusicg rE: anh Tl rs) i) Eg2ez: oo Avigg | as, | Saas BE q fl (of Ue A § | | a 325282 =f: 3 “A, a ci ne Ee E Bet is rs 2 z Aa zs monotheistic ideas. ‘It is” (says Mr Cust, the distinguished Indian | administrator, and champion of mi ionaries), “ever tolerant, or superbly regardle of external religious conceptions, or of internal sects,” It was ever sympathetic, he tells us, to the old cults of local village shrines—for the peasant godlings are more numerous and widely worshiped than even Brahman deities; but its caste laws shut out the ceremonially unclean. 366