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OF THE HINDI'S.
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consequence were driven out of India to Siam, Java, China and Tibet. When the Buddhists, whom all parties considered heterodox were expelled, their enemies began to quarrel amongst themselves, and in the eighth or ninth century a reformer named Sankara Achárya* is celebrated for having refuted and suppressed a variety of unorthodox professors, and established the preferential worship of Siva. He instituted in support of his doctrines an order of mendicants which still subsists, and he is in an especial manner regarded as the founder of a system of belief adhered to by Brahmans of learning, particularly in the south of India. The triumph that he obtained for the deity he patronized did not long survive him. Early in the eleventh century Rámánuja **, a follower of Vishnu, undertook to depose Siva and set up his own divinity, not only in the belief of the people, but in the more substantial benefits of temples and endowments. Tradition records, that the great temple of Triveni, one of the largest and richest in the Peninsula, now dedicated to Vishnu, was wrested from the rival votaries of Siva by Ramanuja and his followers. The ascendency of the Vaishnavas was not undisputed in the sonth, and a new sect of Saivas, to whom I have alluded, the Lingáyits, sprang mp in opposition to them: the contest was carried on with popular violence, and in one of the disturbances that ensued, the
* [Lassen, Ind. Alt.. IV, 618 ff., 836 ff.] ** [1. 1. 608 f. Wilson, Sketch of the Rel. Sects, p. 34-46.]
