[Footnote 406: Hardy, _Indische Religionsgeschichte_, p. 101.]
[Footnote 407: But some of these latter sacrifice images made of dough instead of living animals.]
[Footnote 408: It is said that the Agnishtoma was performed in Benares in 1898, and in the last few years I am told that one or two Vedic sacrifices have been offered annually in various parts of southern India. I have myself seen the sites where such sacrifices were offered in 1908-9 in Mysore city and in Chidambaram, and in 1912 at Wei near Poona. The most usual form of sacrifice now-a-days is said to be the Vâjapeya. Much Vedic ritual is still preserved in the domestic life of the Nambathiri and other Brahmans of southern India. See Cochin, _Tribes and Castes_, and Thurston, _Castes and Tribes of southern India._]
[Footnote 409: The outline of a stûpa may be due to imitation of houses constructed with curved bamboos as Vincent Smith contends (_History of Fine Art_, p. 17). But this is compatible with the view that stone buildings with this curved outline had come to be used specially as funeral monuments before Buddhism popularized in India and all Eastern Asia the architectural form called stûpa.]
[Footnote 410: The temple of Aihole near Badami seems to be a connecting link between a Buddhist stûpa with a pradakshina path and a Hindu shrine.]
[Footnote 411: In most temples (at least in southern India) there are two images: the _mûla-vigraha_ which is of stone and fixed in the sanctuary, and the _utsava-vigraha_ which is smaller, made of metal and carried in processions.]
[Footnote 412: Thus Bhattâchârya (_Hindu Castes and Sects_, p. 127) enumerates eleven classes of Brahmans, who "have a very low status on account of their being connected with the great public shrines," and adds that mere residence in a place of pilgrimage for a few generations tends to lower the status of a Brahmanic family.]
[Footnote 413: Thus in Bengal there is a special class, the Barna Brahmans, who perform religious rites for the lower castes, and are divided into six classes according to the castes to whom they minister. Other Brahmans will not eat or intermarry with them or even take water from them.]
[Footnote 414: This is extraordinarily like the temple ritual of the ancient Egyptians. For some account of the construction and ritual of south Indian temples see Richards in _J. of Mythic Soc_. 1919, pp. 158-107.]