| There seems to have
been from the time, of the Upanisads a school of thinkers who held radically different
views of God, the world and the soul from those, which Samkara elaborated in his system of
Advaita. This school developed the theistically elements in the Upanisads and made bhakti
or devotion to a personal God the primary thing in their teaching. Their position was
strengthened by the Satvatas, otherwise called the Bhagavata - a bhakti school which had
established it self independently even before the time of the grammarian Panini in the
fourth century B. C. and which worshipped Vasudeva, Krsna as their supreme Deity. Some scholars see the alliance between these two schools in the
Bhagavad Gita and the Narayaniy sections of the Mahabharata. The Bhagavatas had
their own scripture called the Pancaratra Agamas which expounded the cult of Vasu deva and
which were therefore looked upon by them as being equal to the Upanisads. Their
religion was one based on God's grace to erring humanity. It therefore greatly emphasized
the doctrine of Avatara or incarnation and popularized the immortal stories, which were
after wards collected together in the Vishnu Purana Harivamsa and the Bhagavata Purana.
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