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RELIGIOUS SECTS
SECTION III.
PRESENT DIVISIONS OF THE HINDUS, AND OF
THE VAISHNAVAS IN PARTICULAR.
The classification adopted by the works, I especially follow, if not unexceptionable, is allowable and convenient, and may, therefore, regulate the following details: it divides all the Hindus into three great classes, or Vaishnavas, Saivas, and Saktas, and refers to a fourth or miscellaneous class, all not comprised in the three others.
The worshippers of VishŃU, ŠIVA, and SAKTI, who are the objects of the following description, are not to be confounded with the orthodox adorers of those divinities: few Brahmans of learning, if they have any religion at all, will acknowledge themselves to belong to any of the popular divisions of the Hindu faith, although, as a matter of simple preference, they more especially worship some individual deity, as their chosen, or Ishta Devatá: they refer also to the Vedas, the books of law, the Puráňas, and Tantras, as the only ritual they recognise, and regard all practices not derived from those sources as irregular and profane: on the other hand, many of the sects seem to have originated, in a great measure, out of opposition to the Brahmanical order: teachers and disciples are chosen from any class, and the distinction of caste is, in a great measure, sunk in the new one, of similarity of schism: the ascetics and mendicants, also in many in
