________________
A SKETCH
OF THE
RELIGIOUS SECTS OF THE HINDUS.
From the Asiatic Researches, Vols. XVI, Calc. 1828, p. 1- 136, and XVII,
Calc. 1832, p. 169-314.
SECTION 1. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. THE Hindu religion is a term, that has been hitherto employed in a collective sense, to designate a faith and worship of an almost endlessly diversified description: to trace some of its varieties is the object of the present enquiry.
An early division of the Hindu system, and one conformable to the genius of all Polytheism, separated the practical and popular belief, from the speculative or philosophical doctrines. Whilst the common people addressed their hopes and fears to stocks and stones, and multiplied by their credulity and superstition the grotesque objects of their veneration, some few, of deeper thought and wider contemplation, plunged into the mysteries of man and nature, and endeavoured assiduously, if not successfully, to obtain just notions of the cause, the character and consequence of existence. This distinction prevails even in the Vedas,
