of the masses: it underlies, supports and interprets their polytheism. This may be accounted the keystone of the fabric of Brahmanism, which accepts and even encourages the rudest forms of idolatry, explaining everything by giving it a higher meaning. It treats all the worships as outward, visible signs of some spiritual truth, and is ready to show how each particular image or rite is the symbol of some aspect of universal divinity. The Hindus, like the pagans of antiquity, adore natural objects and forces--a mountain, a river or an animal. The Brahman holds all nature to be the vesture or cloak of indwelling, divine energy, which inspires everything that produces awe or passes man's understanding" (Sir Alfred C. Lyall, _Brahminism_). Sectarianism. During the early centuries of our era, whilst Buddhism, where countenanced by the political rulers, was still holding its own by the side of Brahmanism, sectarian belief in the Hindu gods seems to have made steady progress. The caste-system, always calculated to favour unity of religious practice within its social groups, must naturally have contributed to the advance of sectarianism. Even greater was the support it received later on from the Puranas, a class of poetical works of a partly legendary, partly discursive and controversial character, mainly composed in the interest of special deities, of which eighteen principal (_maha-purana_) and as many secondary ones (_upa-purana_) are recognized, the oldest of which may go back to about the 4th century of our era. It was probably also during this period that the female element was first definitely admitted to a prominent place amongst the divine objects of sectarian worship, in the shape of the wives of the principal gods viewed as their _sakti_, or female energy, theoretically identified with the _Maya_, or cosmic Illusion, of the idealistic Vedanta, and the _Prakriti_, or plastic matter, of the materialistic Sankhya philosophy, as the primary source of mundane things. The connubial relations of the deities may thus be considered "to typify the mystical union of the two eternal principles, spirit and matter, for the production and reproduction of the universe." But whilst this privilege of divine worship was claimed for the consorts of all the gods, it is principally to Siva's consort, in one or other of her numerous forms, that adoration on an extensive scale came to be offered by a special sect of votaries, the _Saktas_. Sankara.