It would be outside the purpose of this book even to outline the establishment of British authority, but I may mention that direct European influence began to be felt in the sixteenth century, for Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut in 1498 and Goa was a Portuguese possession from 1510 onwards. Nor can we linger over the fortunes of the Marathas who took the place of Vijayanagar as the Hindu opposition to Mohammedanism. They are, however, important for us in so far as they show that even in matters political the long Moslim domination had not broken the spirit of the Hindus. About 1660 a chieftain named Sivaji, who was not merely a successful soldier but something of a fanatic with a belief in his divine mission, founded a kingdom in the western Ghats and, like the Sikh leaders, almost created a nation, for it does not appear that before his time the word Maratha (Mahârâshṭra) had any special ethnic significance. After half a century the power of his successors passed into the hands of their Brahman ministers, known as Peshwas, who became the heads of a confederacy of Maratha chiefs, including the Rajas of Gwalior, Berar and Orissa, Indore and Baroda. About 1760 the Marathas were practically masters of India and though the Mughal Emperor nominally ruled at Delhi, he was under their tutelage. They had a chance of reviving the glories of Asoka and the Guptas, but, even apart from the intervention of Europeans, they were distracted by jealousy and quarrels. CHAPTER III GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIAN RELIGION 1 In the first chapter we enquired whether there are any religious ideas common to Eastern Asia as a whole and found that they amount to little more than a background of nature worship and ancestor worship almost universally present behind the official creeds. Also the conception of a religious system and its relation to beliefs which do not fall within it are not quite the same in these countries as in Europe, so that the inhabitants sometimes follow more than one religion.