Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume II Part 15

Kr?ishn?a, the other great incarnation of Vishn?u, is one of the most conspicuous figures in the Indian pantheon, but his historical origin remains obscure. The word which means black or dark blue occurs in the R?ig Veda as the name of an otherwise unknown person. In the Chandogya Upanishad,[366] Kr?ishn?a, the son of Devaki, is mentioned as having been instructed by the sage Ghora of the an?girasa clan, and it is probably implied that Kr?ishn?a too belonged to that clan.[367] Later sectarian writers never quote this verse, but their silence may be due to the fact that the Upanishad does not refer to Kr?ishn?a as if he were a deity, and merely says that he received from Ghora instruction after which he never thirsted again. The purport of it was that the sacrifice may be performed without rites, the various parts being typified by ordinary human actions, such as hunger, eating, laughter, liberality, righteousness, etc. This doctrine has some resemblance to Buddhist language[368] and if this Kr?ishn?a is really the ancient hero out of whom the later deity was evolved, there may be an allusion to some simple form of wors.h.i.+p which rejected ceremonial and was practised by the tribes to whom Kr?ishn?a belonged. I shall recur to the question of these tribes and the Bhagavata sect below, but in this section I am concerned with the personality of Kr?ishn?a.

Vasudeva is a well-known name of Kr?ishn?a and a sutra of Pan?ini,[369] especially if taken in conjunction with the comment of Patan?jali, appears to a.s.sert that it is not a clan name but the name of a G.o.d. If so Vasudeva must have been recognized as a G.o.d in the fourth century B.C. He is mentioned in inscriptions which appear to date from about the second century B.C.[370] and in the last book of the Taittiriya aran?yaka,[371] which however is a later addition of uncertain date.

The name Kr?ishn?a occurs in Buddhist writings in the form Kan?ha, phonetically equivalent to Kr?ishn?a. In the Digha Nikaya[372] we hear of the clan of the Kan?hayanas (= Karshn?ayanas) and of one Kan?ha who became a great sage. This person may be the Kr?ishn?a of the R?ig Veda, but there is no proof that he is the same as our Kr?ishn?a.

The Ghata-Jataka (No. 454) gives an account of Kr?ishn?a's childhood and subsequent exploits which in many points corresponds with the Brahmanic legends of his life and contains several familiar incidents and names, such as Vasudeva, Baladeva, Kam?sa. Yet it presents many peculiarities and is either an independent version or a misrepresentation of a popular story that had wandered far from its home. Jain tradition also shows that these tales were popular and were worked up into different forms, for the Jains have an elaborate system of ancient patriarchs which includes Vasudevas and Baladevas.

Kr?ishn?a is the ninth of the Black Vasudevas[373] and is connected with Dvaravati or Dvaraka. He will become the twelfth tirthankara of the next world-period and a similar position will be attained by Devaki, Rohini, Baladeva and Javak.u.mara, all members of his family.

This is a striking proof of the popularity of the Kr?ishn?a legend outside the Brahmanic religion.

No references to Kr?ishn?a except the above have been found in the earlier Upanishads and Sutras. He is not mentioned in Manu but in one aspect or another he is the princ.i.p.al figure in the Mahabharata, yet not exactly the hero. The Ramayan?a would have no plot without Rama, but the story of the Mahabharata would not lose its unity if Kr?ishn?a were omitted. He takes the side of the Pan?d?avas, and is sometimes a chief sometimes a G.o.d but he is not essential to the action of the epic.

The legend represents him as the son of Vasudeva, who belonged to the Sattvata sept[374] of the Yadava tribe, and of his wife Devaki. It had been predicted to Kam?sa, king of Mathura (Muttra), that one of her sons would kill him. He therefore slew her first six children: the seventh, Balarama, who is often counted as an incarnation of Vishn?u, was transferred by divine intervention to the womb of Rohini.

Kr?ishn?a, the eighth, escaped by more natural methods. His father was able to give him into the charge of Nanda, a herdsman, and his wife Yasoda who brought him up at Gokula and Vrindavana. Here his youth was pa.s.sed in sporting with the Gopis or milk-maids, of whom he is said to have married a thousand. He had time, however, to perform acts of heroism, and after killing Kam?sa, he transported the inhabitants of Mathura to the city of Dvaraka which he had built on the coast of Gujarat. He became king of the Yadavas and continued his mission of clearing the earth of tyrants and monsters. In the struggle between the Pan?d?avas and the sons of Dhr?itarashtr?a he championed the cause of the former, and after the conclusion of the war retired to Dvaraka.

Internecine conflict broke out among the Yadavas and annihilated the race. Kr?ishn?a himself withdrew to the forest and was killed by a hunter called Jaras (old age) who shot him supposing him to be a deer.

In the Mahabharata and several Puran?as this bare outline is distended with a plethora of miraculous incident remarkable even in Indian literature, and almost all possible forms of divine and human activity are attributed to this many-sided figure. We may indeed suspect that his personality is dual even in the simplest form of the legend for the scene changes from Mathura to Dvaraka, and his character is not quite the same in the two regions. It is probable that an ancient military hero of the west has been combined with a deity or perhaps more than one deity. The pile of story, sentiment and theology which ages have heaped up round Kr?ishn?a's name, represents him in three princ.i.p.al aspects. Firstly, he is a warrior who destroys the powers of evil. Secondly, he is a.s.sociated with love in all its forms, ranging from amorous sport to the love of G.o.d in the most spiritual and mystical sense. Thirdly, he is not only a deity, but he actually becomes G.o.d in the European and also in the pantheistic acceptation of the word, and is the centre of a philosophic theology.

The first of these aspects is clearly the oldest and it is here, if anywhere, that we may hope to find some fragments of history. But the embellishments of poets and story-tellers have been so many that we can only point to features which may indicate a substratum of fact.

In the legend, Kr?ishn?a a.s.sists the Pan?d?avas against the Kauravas.

Now many think that the Pan?d?avas represent a second and later immigration of Aryans into India, composed of tribes who had halted in the Himalayas and perhaps acquired some of the customs of the inhabitants, including polyandry, for the five Pan?d?avas had one wife in common between them. Also, the meaning of the name Kr?ishn?a, black, suggests that he was a chief of some non-Aryan tribe. It is, therefore, possible that one source of the Kr?ishn?a myth is that a body of invading Aryans, described in the legend as the Pan?d?avas, who had not exactly the same laws and beliefs as those already established in Hindustan, were aided by a powerful aboriginal chief, just as the Sisodias in Rajputana were aided by the Bhils. It is possible too that Kr?ishn?a's tribe may have come from Kabul or other mountainous districts of the north west, although one of the most definite points in the legend is his connection with the coast town of Dvaraka. The fortifications of this town and the fruitless efforts of the demon king, Salva, to conquer it by seige are described in the Mahabharata,[375] but the narrative is surrounded by an atmosphere of magic and miracle rather than of history.[376]

Though it would not be reasonable to pick out the less fantastic parts of the Kr?ishn?a legend and interpret them as history, yet we may fairly attach significance to the fact that many episodes represent him as in conflict with Brahmanic inst.i.tutions and hardly maintaining the position of Vishn?u incarnate.[377] Thus he plunders Indra's garden and defeats the G.o.ds who attempt to resist him. He fights with Siva and Skanda. He burns Benares and all its inhabitants. Yet he is called Upendra, which, whatever other explanations sectarian ingenuity may invent, can hardly mean anything but the Lesser Indra, and he fills the humble post of Arjuna's charioteer. His kinsmen seem to have been of little repute, for part of his mission was to destroy his own clan and after presiding over its annihilation in internecine strife, he was slain himself. In all this we see dimly the figure of some aboriginal hero who, though ultimately canonized, represented a force not in complete harmony with Brahmanic civilization. The figure has also many solar attributes but these need not mean that its origin is to be sought in a sun myth, but rather that, as many early deities were forms of the sun, solar attributes came to be a natural part of divinity and were ascribed to the deified Kr?ishn?a just as they were to the deified Buddha.[378]

Some authors hold that the historical Kr?ishn?a was a teacher, similar to Zarathustra, and that though of the military cla.s.s he was chiefly occupied in founding or supporting what was afterwards known as the religion of the Bhagavatas, a theistic system inculcating the wors.h.i.+p of one G.o.d, called Bhagavat, and perhaps identical with the Sun. It is probable that Kr?ishn?a the hero was connected with the wors.h.i.+p of a special deity, but I see no evidence that he was primarily a teacher.[379] In the earlier legends he is a man of arms: in the later he is not one who devotes his life to teaching but a forceful personage who explains the nature of G.o.d and the universe at the most unexpected moments. Now the founders of religions such as Mahavira and Buddha preserve their character as teachers even in legend and do not acc.u.mulate miscellaneous heroic exploits. Similarly modern founders of sects, like Caitanya, though revered as incarnations, still retain their historical attributes. But on the other hand many men of action have been deified not because they taught anything but because they seemed to be more than human forces. Rama is a cla.s.sical example of such deification and many local deities can be shown to be warriors, bandits and hunters whose powers inspired respect. It is said that there is a disposition in the Bombay Presidency to deify the Maratha leader Sivaji.[380]

In his second aspect, Kr?ishn?a is a pastoral deity, sporting among nymphs and cattle. It is possible that this Kr?ishn?a is in his origin distinct from the violent and tragic hero of Dvaraka. The two characters have little in common, except their lawlessness, and the date and locality of the two cycles of legend are different. But the death of Kam?sa which is one of the oldest incidents in the story (for it is mentioned in the Mahabhashya[381]) belongs to both and Kam?sa is consistently connected with Muttra. The Mahabharata is mainly concerned with Kr?ishn?a the warrior: the few allusions in it to the freaks of the pastoral Kr?ishn?a occur in pa.s.sages suspected of being late interpolations and, even if they are genuine, show that little attention was paid to his youth. But in later works, the relative importance is reversed and the figure of the amorous herdsman almost banishes the warrior. We can trace the growth of this figure in the sculptures of the sixth century, in the Vishn?u and Bhagavata Puran?as and the Gita-govinda (written about 1170). Even later is the wors.h.i.+p of Radha, Kr?ishn?a's mistress, as a portion of the deity, who is supposed to have divided himself into male and female halves.[382] The birth and adventures of the pastoral Kr?ishn?a are located in the land of Braj, the district round Muttra and among the tribe of the abhiras, but the warlike Kr?ishn?a is connected with the west, although his exploits extend to the Ganges valley.[383] The abhiras, now called Ahirs, were nomadic herdsmen who came from the west and their movements between Kathiawar and Muttra may have something to do with the double location of the Kr?ishn?a legend.

Both archaeology and historical notices tell us something of the history of Muttra. It was a great Buddhist and Jain centre, as the statues and viharas found there attest. Ptolemy calls it the city of the G.o.ds. Fa-Hsien (400 A.D.) describes it as Buddhist, but that faith was declining at the time of Hsuan Chuang's visit (c. 630 A.D.). The sculptural remains also indicate the presence of Graeco-Bactrian influence. We need not therefore feel surprise if we find in the religious thought of Muttra elements traceable to Greece, Persia or Central Asia. Some claim that Christianity should be reckoned among these elements and I shall discuss the question elsewhere. Here I will only say that such ideas as were common to Christianity and to the religions of Greece and western Asia probably did penetrate to India by the northern route, but of specifically Christian ideas I see no proof. It is true that the pastoral Kr?ishn?a is unlike all earlier Indian deities, but then no close parallel to him can be adduced from elsewhere, and, take him as a whole, he is a decidedly un-christian figure. The resemblance to Christianity consists in the wors.h.i.+p of a divine child, together with his mother. But this feature is absent in the New Testament and seems to have been borrowed from paganism by Christianity.

The legends of Muttra show even clearer traces than those already quoted of hostility between Kr?ishn?a and Brahmanism. He forbids the wors.h.i.+p of Indra,[384] and when Indra in anger sends down a deluge of rain, he protects the country by holding up over it the hill of Goburdhan, which is still one of the great centres of pilgrimage.[385]

The language which the Vishn?u Puran?a attributes to him is extremely remarkable. He interrupts a sacrifice which his fosterfather is offering to Indra and says, "We have neither fields nor houses: we wander about happily wherever we list, travelling in our waggons. What have we to do with Indra? Cattle and mountains are (our) G.o.ds.

Brahmans offer wors.h.i.+p with prayer: cultivators of the earth adore their landmarks but we who tend our herds in the forests and mountains should wors.h.i.+p them and our kine."

This pa.s.sage suggests that Kr?ishn?a represents a tribe of highland nomads who wors.h.i.+pped mountains and cattle and came to terms with the Brahmanic ritual only after a struggle. The wors.h.i.+p of mountain spirits is common in Central Asia, but I do not know of any evidence for cattle-wors.h.i.+p in those regions. Clemens of Alexandria,[386]

writing at the end of the second century A.D., tells us that the Indians wors.h.i.+pped Herakles and Pan. The pastoral Kr?ishn?a has considerable resemblance to Pan or a Faun, but no representations of such beings are recorded from Graeco-Indian sculptures. Several Bacchic groups have however been discovered in Gandhara and also at Muttra[387] and Megasthenes recognized Dionysus in some Indian deity.

Though the Bacchic revels and mysteries do not explain the pastoral element in the Kr?ishn?a legend, they offer a parallel to some of its other features, such as the dancing and the crowd of women, and I am inclined to think that such Greek ideas may have germinated and proved fruitful in Muttra. The Greek king Menander is said to have occupied the city (c. 155 B.C.), and the sculptures found there indicate that Greek artistic forms were used to express Indian ideas. There may have been a similar fusion in religion.

In any case, Buddhism was predominant in Muttra for several centuries.

It no doubt forbade the animal sacrifices of the Brahmans and favoured milder rites. It may even offer some explanation for the frivolous character of much in the Kr?ishn?a legend.[388] Most Brahmanic deities, extraordinary as their conduct often is, are serious and imposing. But Buddhism claimed for itself the serious side of religion and while it tolerated local G.o.dlings treated them as fairies or elves. It was perhaps while Kr?ishn?a was a humble rustic deity of this sort, with no claim to represent the Almighty, that there first gathered round him the cycle of light love-stories which has clung to him ever since. In the hands of the Brahmans his wors.h.i.+p has undergone the strangest variations which touch the highest and lowest planes of Hinduism, but the Muttra legend still retains its special note of pastoral romance, and exhibits Kr?ishn?a in two princ.i.p.al characters, as the divine child and as the divine lover. The mysteries of birth and of s.e.xual union are congenial topics to Hindu theology, but in the cult of Muttra we are not concerned with reproduction as a world force, but simply with childhood and love as emotional manifestations of the deity. The same ideas occur in Christianity, and even in the Gospels Christ is compared to a bridegroom, but the Kr?ishn?a legend is far more gross and nave.

The infant Kr?ishn?a is commonly adored in the form known as Makhan Chor or the b.u.t.ter Thief.[389] This represents him as a crawling child holding out one hand full of curds or b.u.t.ter which he has stolen. We speak of idolizing a child, and when Hindu women wors.h.i.+p this image they are unconsciously generalizing the process and wors.h.i.+pping childhood, its wayward pranks as well as its loveable simplicity, and though it is hard for a man to think of the freaks of the b.u.t.ter thief as a manifestation of divinity, yet clearly there is an a.n.a.logy between these childish escapades and the caprices of mature deities, which are respectfully described as mysteries. If one admits the wors.h.i.+p of the Bambino, it is not unreasonable to include in it admiration of his rogueries, and the tender playfulness which is permitted to enter into this cult appeals profoundly to Indian women.

Images of the Makhan Chor are sold by thousands in the streets of Muttra.

Even more popular is the image known as Kanhaya, which represents the G.o.d as a young man playing the flute as he stands in a careless att.i.tude, which has something of h.e.l.lenic grace. Kr?ishn?a in this form is the beloved of the Gopis, or milk-maids, of the land of Braj, and the spouse of Radha, though she had no monopoly of him. The stories of his frolics with these damsels and the rites inst.i.tuted in memory thereof have brought his wors.h.i.+p into merited discredit.

Krishnaism offers the most extensive manifestation to be found in the world of what W. James calls the theopathic condition as ill.u.s.trated by nuns like Marguerite Marie Alacoque, Saint Gertrude and the more distinguished Saint Theresa. "To be loved by G.o.d and loved by him to distraction (jusqu'a la folie), Margaret melted away with love at the thought of such a thing.... She said to G.o.d, 'Hold back, my G.o.d, these torrents which overwhelm me or else enlarge my capacity for their reception'."[390] These are not the words of the Gita-govinda or the Prem Sagar, as might be supposed, but of a Catholic Bishop describing the transports of Sister Marguerite Marie, and they ill.u.s.trate the temper of Kr?ishn?a's wors.h.i.+ppers. But the verses of the Marathi poet, Tukaram, who lived about 1600 A.D. and sang the praises of Kr?ishn?a, rise above this sentimentality though he uses the language of love. In a letter to Sivaji, who desired to see him, he wrote, "As a chaste wife longs only to see her lord, such am I to Vit?t?hala.[391] All the world is to me Vit?t?hala and nothing else: thee also I behold in him." He also wrote elsewhere, "he that taketh the unprotected to his heart and doeth to a servant the same kindness as to his own children, is a.s.suredly the image of G.o.d." More recently Ramakr?ishn?a, whose sayings breathe a wide intelligence as well as a wide charity, has given this religion of love an expression which, if somewhat too s.e.xual to be perfectly in accordance with western taste, is nearly related to emotional Christianity. "A true lover sees his G.o.d as his nearest and dearest relative" he writes, "just as the shepherd women of Vr?indavana saw in Kr?ishn?a not the Lord of the Universe but their own beloved.... The knowledge of G.o.d may be likened to a man, while the love of G.o.d is like a woman. Knowledge has entry only up to the outer rooms of G.o.d, and no one can enter into the inner mysteries of G.o.d save a lover.... Knowledge and love of G.o.d are ultimately one and the same. There is no difference between pure knowledge and pure love."[392]

These extracts show how Kr?ishn?a as the object of the soul's desire a.s.sumes the place of the Supreme Being or G.o.d. But this surprising transformation[393] is not specially connected with the pastoral and erotic Kr?ishn?a: the best known and most thorough-going exposition of his divinity is found in the Bhagavad-gita, which represents him as being in his human aspect, a warrior and the charioteer of Arjuna.

Probably some seventy-five millions to-day wors.h.i.+p Kr?ishn?a, especially under the name of Hari, as G.o.d in the pantheistic sense and naturally the more his ident.i.ty with the supreme spirit is emphasized, the dimmer grow the legendary features which mark the hero of Muttra and Dvaraka, and the human element in him is reduced to this very important point that the tie uniting him to his wors.h.i.+ppers is one of sentiment and affection.

In the following chapters I shall treat of this wors.h.i.+p when describing the various sects which practise it. A question of some importance for the history of Kr?ishn?a's deification is the meaning of the name Vasudeva. One explanation makes it a patronymic, son of Vasudeva, and supposes that when this prince Vasudeva was deified his name, like Rama, was transferred to the deity. The other regards Vasudeva as a name for the deity used by the Sattvata clan and supposes that when Kr?ishn?a was deified this already well-known divine name was bestowed on him. There is much to be said for this latter theory. As we have seen the Jains give the t.i.tle Vasudeva to a series of supermen, and a remarkable legend states[394] that a king called Paundraka who pretended to be a deity used the t.i.tle Vasudeva and ordered Kr?ishn?a to cease using it, for which impertinence he was slain. This clearly implies that the t.i.tle was something which could be detached from Kr?ishn?a and not a mere patronymic. Indian writings countenance both etymologies of the word. As the name of the deity they derive it from _vas_ to dwell, he in whom all things abide and who abides in all.[395]

5

Siva and Vishn?u are not in their nature different from other Indian ideas, high or low. They are the offspring of philosophic and poetic minds playing with a luxuriant popular mythology. But even in the epics they have already become fixed points in a flux of changing fancies and serve as receptacles in which the most diverse notions are collected and stored. Nearly all philosophy and superst.i.tion finds its place in Hinduism by being connected with one or both of them. The two wors.h.i.+ps are not characteristic of different periods: they coexist when they first become known to us as they do at the present day and in essential doctrines they are much alike. We have no name for this curious double theism in which each party describes its own deity as the supreme G.o.d or All-G.o.d, yet without denying the G.o.d of the other.

Something similar might be produced in Christianity if different Churches were avowedly to wors.h.i.+p different persons of the Trinity.

Siva and Vishn?u are sometimes contrasted and occasionally their wors.h.i.+ppers quarrel.[396] But the general inclination is rather to make the two figures approximate by bestowing the same attributes on both. A deity must be able to satisfy emotional devotion: hence the Tamil Sivaite says of Siva the destroyer, "one should wors.h.i.+p in supreme love him who does kindness to the soul." But then the feature in the world which most impresses the Hindu is the constant change and destruction, and this must find a place in the All-G.o.d. Hence the sportive kindly Kr?ishn?a comes to be declared the destroyer of the worlds.[397] It is as if in some vast Dravidian temple one wandered through two corridors differently ornamented and a.s.signed to the priests of different rites but both leading to the same image. Hence it is not surprising to find that there is actually a deity--if indeed the term is suitable, but European vocabularies hardly provide one which meets the case--called Harihara (or Sankara-Narayan?a), that is Siva and Vishn?u combined. The Harivam?sa contains a hymn addressed to him: fairly ancient sculptures attest the prevalence of his wors.h.i.+p in the Deccan, especially at Badami, he was once the chief deity of Camboja and he is still popular in south India. Here besides being wors.h.i.+pped under his own name he has undergone a singular transformation and has probably been amalgamated with some aboriginal deity. Under the designation of Ayenar (said to be a corruption of Harihara) he is extensively wors.h.i.+pped as a village G.o.d and reputed to be the son of Siva and Vishn?u, the latter having kindly a.s.sumed the form of a woman to effect his birth.

Another form of this inclination to combine and unite the various manifestations of the Divine is the tendency to wors.h.i.+p groups of G.o.ds, a practice as old as the Vedas. Thus many temples are dedicated to a group of five, namely, Siva, Vishn?u, Durga, Gan?esa and the Sun and it is stated that every Hindu wors.h.i.+ps these five deities in his daily prayers.[398] The Trimurti, or figure of Brahma, Siva and Vishn?u, ill.u.s.trates the wors.h.i.+p of groups. Its importance has sometimes been over-estimated by Europeans from an idea that it corresponded to the Christian Trinity, but in reality this triad is late and has little significance. No stress is laid on the idea of three in one and the number of persons can be increased. The Brahma-vaivarta Puran?a for instance adds Kr?ishn?a to Brahma, Siva and Vishn?u. The union of three personalities is merely a way of summing up the chief attributes of the All-G.o.d. Thus the Vishn?u Puran?a[399] extols Vishn?u as being "Hiran?yagarbha, Hari and San?kara (_i.e._ Brahma, Vishn?u and Siva), the creator, preserver and destroyer," but in another pa.s.sage as him who is "Brahma, isvara and spirit (Pum?s), who with the three Gun?as (qualities of matter) is the cause of creation, preservation and destruction...." The origin of the triad, so far as it has any doctrinal or philosophical meaning, is probably to be sought in the personification of the three Gun?as.[400]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 334: See especially Dig. Nik. XX. and x.x.xII.]

[Footnote 335: But the lists may be pieces of folk-lore older than the suttas in which they are incorporated.]

[Footnote 336: The Dionysus of Megasthenes is a deity who comes from the west with an army that suffers from the heat of the plains. If we could be certain that he meant Siva by Dionysus this would be valuable evidence. But he clearly misunderstood many things in Indian religion.

Greek legends connected Dionysus with India and the East.]

[Footnote 337: Macdonell seems to me correct in saying (_J.R.A.S._ 1915, p. 125) that one reason why Indian deities have many arms is that they may be able to carry the various symbols by which they are characterized. Another reason is that wors.h.i.+p is usually accompanied by dhyana, that is forming a mental image of the deity as described in a particular text. _E.g._ the wors.h.i.+pper repeats a mantra which describes a deity in language which was originally metaphorical as having many heads and arms and at the same time he ought to make a mental image of such a figure.]

[Footnote 338: But some forms of Sivaism in southern India come even nearer to emotional Christianity than does Vishnuism.]

[Footnote 339: I cannot discover that any alleged avatara of Siva has now or has had formerly any importance, but the Vayu, Lin?ga and Kurma Purana give lists of such incarnations, as does also the Catechism of the Shaiva religion translated by Foulkes. But Indian sects have a strong tendency to ascribe all possible achievements and attributes to their G.o.ds. The mere fact that Vishn?u becomes incarnate incites the ardent Sivaite to say that his G.o.d can do the same. A curious instance of this rivalry is found in the story that Siva manifested himself as Sarabha-murti in order to curb the ferocity of Vishn?u when incarnate in the Man Lion (see Gopinatha Rao, _Hindu Icon_. p. 45). Siva often appears in a special form, not necessarily human, for a special purpose (_e.g._ Virabhadra) and some tantric Buddhas seem to be imitations of these apparitions. There is a strong element of Sivaism borrowed from Bengal in the mythology of Tibet and Mongolia, where such personages as Hevajra, Sam?vara, and Mahakala have a considerable importance under the strange t.i.tle of Buddhas.]

[Footnote 340: The pa.s.sage from one epithet to the other is very plain in _R.V._ I. 114.]

[Footnote 341: Book XVI.]

[Footnote 342: In the play Mricchakat?ika or The Clay Cart (probably of the sixth century A.D.) a burglar invokes Kartikeya, the son of Siva, who is said to have taught different styles of house-breaking.]

[Footnote 343: A similarly strange collocation of attributes is found in Daksha's hymn to Siva. Mahabharata, XII. Sec. 285.]

[Footnote 344: Atharva, V. xi. 2. 24.]

[Footnote 345: It is not certain if the Sisn?adevah whom Indra is asked to destroy in R?ig. V. VII. 21. 5 and X. 99. 3 are priapic demons or wors.h.i.+ppers of the phallus.]

[Footnote 346: VII. secs. 202, 203, and XIII. sec. 14.]

[Footnote 347: The inscriptions of Camboja and Champa seem to be the best proof of the antiquity of Linga wors.h.i.+p. A Cambojan inscription of about 550 A.D. records the dedication of a linga and the wors.h.i.+p must have taken some time to reach Camboja from India. Some lingas discovered in India are said to be anterior to the Christian era.]

[Footnote 348: See F. Kittel, _Ueber den Ursprung der Linga Kultus_, and Barth, _Religions of India_, p. 261.]

[Footnote 349: As is also its appearance, as a rule. But there are exceptions to this. Some Hindus deny that the Linga is a phallic emblem. It is hardly possible to maintain this thesis in view of such pa.s.sages as Mahabh. XIII. 14 and the innumerable figures in which there are both a linga and a Yoni. But it is true that in its later forms the wors.h.i.+p is purged of all grossness and that in its earlier forms the symbol adored was often a stupa-like column or a pillar with figures on it.]