THE BIRTH OF KRISHNA. the more valuable from the independent developements of these several myths from a common germ. Thus if Pausanias speaks of Dionysos Antheus, Krishna also is Vanamali, the flower-crowned. If Herakles smites Antaios, Krishna overthrows the giant Madhu, and the cruel tyrant of Madura. Like Oidipous, Romulus, Perseus, Cyrus and others, he is one of the fatal children, born to be the ruin of their sires; and the king of Madura, like Laios, is terrified by the prediction that his sister's son shall deprive him of his throne and his life. It is but the myth of Kronos and Zeus in another form. The desire of Kamsa is to slay his sister, but her husband promises to deliver all her children into the hands of the tyrant. But although six infants were thus placed in his power and slain, he shut up the beautiful Devaki and her husband in a dungeon; and when the seventh child was about to be born, Devaki prays, like Rhea, that this one at least may be spared. In answer to her entreaty, Bhavani, who shields the newly-born children, comes to comfort her, and taking the babe brings it to the house of Nanda, to whom a son, Balarama, had been born. When Devaki was to become for the eighth time a mother, Kamsa was again eager to destroy the child. As the hour drew near, the mother became more beautiful, her form more brilliant, while the dungeon was filled with a heavenly light as when Zeus came to Danaê in a golden shower, and the air was filled with a heavenly harmony as the chorus of the gods, with Brahma and Siva at their head, poured forth their gladness in song. All these marvels (which the Bhagavata Purana assigns to the birth of the child) are reported to Kamsa by the warders, and his jealousy and fear are This song would of itself suffice to prove how thoroughly Krishna, like Dyu, Indra, Varuna, Agni, or any other names, denotes the mere conception of the One True God, who is but feebly shadowed forth under these titles and by the symbolism of these myths. 'As Aditi,' say the gods to Devaki the mother of the unborn Krishna, 'thou art the parent of the gods; as Diti, thou art the mother of the Daityas, their foes. . . . The whole earth, decorated with oceans, rivers, continents, cities, villages, hamlets, and towns; all 133 СНАР. II. BOOK 1 still more vehemently excited. But the fatal hour draws 1 Vishnu Purana, H. H. Wilson, 503. Milton was led into the same strain of 'Peaceful was the night Smoothly the waters kissed, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, the king. KRISHNA AND THE GOPIAS. At midnight Kamsa enters the dungeon, and Devaki entreats his mercy for the babe. She prays in vain; but before Kamsa can accomplish his will, the child slips from his grasp, and he hears the voice of Bhavani, telling him that his destroyer is born and has been placed beyond his reach. Mad with rage, the tyrant summons his council and asks what should be done. The answer is that, as they know not where the child is, he should order all the newlyborn infants or all children under two years to be slain. More assured than ever that his great enemy was his sister's child, he sets everything in motion to insure his destruction. But the demon Putana, who assaults the child in his cradle, is dealt with as summarily as the dragons who seek to strangle the infant Herakles. This demon, finding Krishna asleep, took him up and gave him her breast to suck, the doom of all who do so suck being instant death; but Krishna strains it with such violence as to drain Putana of all life, -a touch which recalls the myth of Herakles and Hêrê in connexion with the Milky Way. As Krishna grew up, he became the darling of the milk-maidens, in whom some have seen the stars of the morning sky,-an inference which seems to be here warranted by the myth that Krishna stole their milk, seemingly as the sun puts out the light of the stars; and this inference is strengthened by the story which connected the formation of the milky way with the nursing of Herakles by Hêrê. When the maidens complained of the wrong, Krishna opened his mouth, and therein they saw revealed his full splendour. They now beheld him seated in the midst of all created things, receiving adoration from all. But from this glimpse of his real glory the legend returns to the myths told of swan-maidens and their lovers. In the nine days' harvest feast of Bhavanî (the nine days' festival of Dêmêtêr) the Gopias, each and all, pray to the goddess that they may become the brides of Krishna." See page 44. This myth is in strict accordance with the old Vedic phrase addressed to the Sun as the horse: After thee is the chariot; after thee, Arvan, the man; after thee the cows: after thee, the host of the girls.' Thus, like Agni, Indra, 135 CHAP. II. BOOK II. As they bathe in a stream, Krishna takes their clothes and refuses to surrender them unless each comes separately for her raiment. Thus the prayer is fulfilled, and Krishna, playing on his flute among the Gopias, becomes the Hellenic Apollôn Nomios,1 whose harp is the harp of Orpheus, rousing all things into life and energy. With these maidens he dances, like Apollôn with the Muses, each maiden fancying that she alone is his partner (an idea which we find again in the story of the Athenian Prokris). Only Radha, who loved Krishna with an absorbing affection, saw things as they really were, and withdrew herself from the company. In vain Krishna sent maidens to soothe her and bring her back. To none would she listen, until the god came to her himself. His words soon healed the wrong, and so great was his joy with her that he lengthened the night which followed to the length of six months, an incident which has but half preserved its meaning in the myth of Zeus and Alkmênê, but which here points clearly to the six months which Persephonê spends with her mother Dêmêtêr. The same purely solar character is impressed on the myth in the Bhagavata Purana, which relates how Brahma, wishing to prove whether Krishna was or was not an incarnation of Vishnu, came upon him as he and Balarama were sleeping among the shepherd youths and maidens. All these Brahma took away and shut up in a distant prison,-and Krishna and his brother on awaking found themselves alone. Balarama proposed to go in search of them. Krishna at once created the same number of youths and maidens so precisely like those which had been taken away that when Brahma returned at the end of a year, he beheld to his astonishment the troop which he fancied that he had broken up. Hurrying to the prison he found that none had escaped from it, and thus convinced of the power of Krishna, he led all his gloaming, as it were by a more serene The parallel is exact. Phoibos giving to Hermes charge over his cattle is represented by Indra, who says to Krishna, 'I have now come by desire of the cattle to install you as Upendra, and as the Indra of the cows thou shalt be called Govinda.'-Vishnu Purana, H. H. Wilson, 528. THE DEATH OF KRISHNA. 137 II. prisoners back to him, who then suffered the phantasms CHAP. which he had evoked to vanish away. Here we have the sleep of the sun-god which in other myths becomes the sleep of Persephone and Brynhild, of Endymion or Adonis,-the slumber of autumn when the bright clouds are imprisoned in the cave of Cacus or the Panis, while the new created youths and maidens represent merely the days and months which come round again as in the years that had passed away. In his solar character Krishna must again be the slayer of the Dragon or Black Snake, Kalinak, the old serpent with the thousand heads, who, like Vritra or the Sphinx, poisons or shuts up the waters. In the fight which follows, and which Hindu art has especially delighted in symbolising, Krishna freed himself from the coils of the snake, and stamped upon his heads until he had crushed them all. The sequel of the myth in its more recent form goes on to relate his death,-how Balarama lay down to sleep beneath the Banyan tree,-how from his throat issued a monstrous snake, like the cobra of Vikram in the modern Hindu story,-how Krishna himself became sorely depressed, -how, as he lay among the bushes with his foot so placed that his heel, in which alone he, like so many others, was vulnerable, was exposed, a huntsman, thinking that he was aiming at a gazelle, shot him with an arrow, and the ground was bathed with his blood,-incidents which are at once explained by a reference to the myths of Baldur, Adonis, or Osiris.2 1 The Vishnu Purana (Wilson, 514) tells us how, stirred up by the incitements of Nanda, Krishna lays hold of the middle hood of the chief of the snakes with both hands, and, bending it down, dances upon it in triumph. Whenever the snake attempted to raise his head, it was again trodden down, and many bruises were inflicted on the hood by the pressure of the toes of Krishna. Among the many foes conquered by Krishna is Naraka, from whom he rescues elephants, horses, women, &c. At an auspicious season he espoused all the maidens whom Naraka had carried off from their friends. At one and the same moment he received the hands of all of them, according to the ritual, in separate mansions. Sixteen 2 It is, of course, true that these |