Hinduism is not a single religion as most Indians and all for„eigners think. It is a composite religion comprising the two great religions of the Tamilians, viz., Saivism and Vaishnavism, and the Brahmanical cult of Brahma workship.

     The original religious practice of the Vedic Aryans was exclusively an elaborate system of sacrifices to a number of minor deities, most of whom were and are not known to the indigenous people of India. The Vedic Aryans were actually mocking their contemporary Dravidian Saivites of North India as Sišnadevƒs, with reference to their phallic workship. But they later found out that their sacrificial system was far inferior to the monotheistic religions of the Dravidian aboriginals and that they could never hope of converting the latter to their own religious system. So they embraced Saivism and Vaishnavism, at the same time Aryanizing them by the admixture of the Brahma cult, Brahminisation of the priestly order and Sanskritisation of the liturgical formularies. They took advantage of the doctrine of triple functions of God, and created the Triad consisting of Brahma, Vish–u and Siva, and assigned them the duties of creation, protection and destruction respectively.

     With a view to securing the allegiance of the Tamilicans to Brahma, he was affiliated to Vishnu, who was, in his turn, made brother of Malaimagal, the Consort of Siva who was identified with Rudra, the storm-god of the Vedic Pantheon.

     Vish–u was called Vi–du or Mƒy†n in the literary dialect and Tirumƒl or Perumƒ˜ in the colloquial speech, by the Tamilians. The Vish–u of the Vedic pantheon was a solar deity and had nothing to do with the Tamil Vi–du. The radical signification of all the names of Vish–u in Tamil is ‘the Black One’.

The Vedic word Siva, meaning ‘auspicious’ occurs in the Vedas only as an epithet of Rudra, Indra and Agni. So, it is not to be confused with the Tamil name Siva, which means ‘the Red One’.