[Footnote 396: Thus the Saura Purâṇa inveighs against the Mâdhva sect (XXXVIII.-XL.) and calls Vishṇu the servant of Śiva: a Purâṇic legal work called the Vriddha-Harita-Samhitâ is said to contain a polemic against Śiva. Occasionally we hear of collisions between the followers of Vishṇu and Śiva or the desecration of temples by hostile fanatics. But such conflicts take place most often not between widely different sects but between subdivisions of the same sect, _e.g._, Tengalais and Vadagalais. It would seem too that at present most Hindus of the higher castes avoid ostentatious membership of the modern sects, and though they may practise special devotion to either Vishṇu or Śiva, yet they visit the temples of both deities when they go on pilgrimages. Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya in his _Hindu Castes and Sects_ says (p. 364) that aristocratic Brahmans usually keep in their private chapels both a salâgram representing Vishṇu and emblems representing Śiva and his spouse. Hence different observers vary in their estimates of the importance of sectarian divisions, some holding that sect is the essence of modern Hinduism and others that most educated Hindus do not worship a sectarian deity. The Kûrma Purâṇa, Part I. chap. XXII. contains some curious rules as to what deities should be worshipped by the various classes of men and spirits.] [Footnote 397: Bhag.-gîtâ, XL. 23-34.] [Footnote 398: See Srisa Chandra Vasu, _Daily practice of the Hindus_, p. 118.] [Footnote 399: II. 1 and I. 1.] [Footnote 400: See Maitrâyaṇa Up. V. 2. It is highly probable that the celebrated image at Elephanta is not a Trimûrti at all but a Maheśamûrti of Śiva. See Gopinâtha Rao, _Hindu Iconog._ II. 382.] CHAPTER XXVI FEATURES OF HINDUISM: RITUAL, CASTE, SECT, FAITH 1 In the last chapter I traced the growth of the great gods Śiva and Vishṇu. The prominence of these figures is one of the marks which distinguish the later phase of Indian religion from the earlier. But it is also distinguished by various practices, institutions and beliefs, which are more or less connected with the new deities. Such are a new ritual, the elaboration of the caste system, the growth of sects, and the tendency to make devotion to a particular deity the essence of religion. In the present chapter I shall say something of these phenomena.