Page 169 - Hinduism

of Buddhist and Jain ideas many groups of Brahmins as well as non-Brahmins became vegetarian.
IX.13 Vaishnavism in the South
At a later period arose the fully organized Bhakti movement leading to Vaishnavism and Saivism. The ancient Vaisnava mystics and saints in the South were known as Alwars, and the Vaishnavism teachers as Acaryas. They had a powerful exponent of these views in Ramanuja, who attacked the Advaita interpretation of the Upanishads and gave recognition to three ultimate realities, God, Soul and Matter, the last two being dependent on the first.
As early as the 2nd century B. C. the renowned Besnagar Column had been erected by a Greek named Heliodorous, who had been converted to the Bhagavata or Vaisnava faith of which the Pancharatra doctrines then formed an integral part; its scriptures were Satvata Samhita, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata and Vishnu Puranas. The origin of the Pancharatra doctrines which form the basis of Srivaishnavite culture has been traced further back to the well known Purushasukta of the Rig-Veda. The Satapatha Brahmana refers to the Pancharatra sacrifices performed by the primeval Narayana, the idea of Nara and Narayana (Primordial man and the deity Vishnu) being an integral part of ancient Indian thought. There are more than a dozen Vaishnava
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