The religious world in India in the times preceding his birth, like the religious world of Palestine, had a hierarchy represented by the Brahmans, the indispensable functionaries in all sacrificial services. Corresponding to the Scribes were the Teviggi, the reciters and expounders of the sacred and still unwritten books. The Rabbin had their analogies in reforming Brahmans, who alone or in communities that had gathered round them professed to teach the higher discipline which could secure deliverance. If a multitude of sects be an indication of intellectual movement, there was as much stir in Brahmanism as in Judaism. In the Pali books there are mentioned as contemporaries of Buddha six noted teachers of great schools, the most formidable of whom, or at least the most hated of his soul, was the head of an ascetic sect which, like the Essenes, had renounced the world to make good their own salvation. This Niggantha sect, still represented in India by close upon half a million of adherents in the district of Rajputana, claims not only to have preceded the founder of Buddhism by two hundred and fifty years, but to have anticipated the essentials of his system.[128] Its philosophical and ethical doctrines are almost in accord with his, while its cosmogony and ritual incline more towards those of Hinduism. Its adherents apply to their founder the titles “Victor” or Jina, and “Enlightened One” or Buddha, which many imagine were ascribed solely to Gotama; but whether Buddhism sprang from it or gave birth to Jainism is a question still undecided. The only solid fact as yet ascertained is that from the earliest traceable period their mutual relations are marked by that pronounced intolerance[129] which prevails when kinsfolk quarrel.