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His doctrine, which may be said to constitute a kind of reaction against the severe sacerdotalism of Sankara, has spread over all classes of the southern community, most of the priests of Saiva temples there being adherents of it; whilst in northern India its votaries are only occasionally met with, and then mostly as mendicants, leading about a neatly caparisoned bull as representing Siva’s sacred bull Nandi.

Whilst the Saiva philosophers do not approve of the notion of incarnations, as being derogatory to the dignity of the deity, the Brahmans have nevertheless thought fit to adopt it as apparently a convenient expedient for bringing certain tendencies of popular worship within the pale of their system, and probably also for counteracting the Buddhist doctrines; and for this purpose Vishnu would obviously offer himself as the most attractive figure in the Brahmanical trinity.

To a certain extent this is indeed the case; but though Vaishnavism, and especially the Krishna creed, with its luxuriant growth of erotic legends, might have seemed peculiarly favourable to a development in this direction, it is practically only in connexion with the Saiva system that an independent cult of the female principle has been developed; whilst in other sects—and, indeed, in the ordinary Saiva cult as well—such worship, even where it is at all prominent, is combined with, and subordinated to, that of the male principle.

What has made this cult attach itself more especially to the Saiva creed is doubtless the character of Siva as the type of reproductive power, in addition to his function as destroyer which, as we shall see, is likewise reflected in some of the forms of his Sakti.

The practical result of his labours was the foundation of a new sect, the Smartas, i.e. adherents of the smriti or tradition, which has a numerous following amongst southern Brahmans, and, whilst professing Sankara’s doctrines, is usually classed as one of the Saiva sects, its members adopting the horizontal sectarial mark peculiar to Saivas, consisting in their case of a triple line, the tripundra, prepared from the ashes of burnt cow-dung and painted on the forehead.