divinity began to be paid to him in many places beyond his native land, and about the beginning of our era he was recognised as an incarnation of Vishṇu sent to establish a reign of righteousness in the world. In Southern India this cult of Rāma, like that of Kṛishṇa, has for the most part remained subordinate to the worship of Vishṇu, though the Vaishṇava church there has from early times recognised the divinity of both of them as embodiments of the Almighty. But its great home is the North, where millions worship Rāma with passionate and all-absorbing love.
III. Some Later Preachers
With all its attractions and success, the new Kṛishṇaism did not everywhere overgrow the older stock upon which it had been engrafted. There were many places in which the early worship of Vishṇu and Vāsudēva remained almost unchanged. The new legends of Kṛishṇa's childhood might indeed be accepted in these centres of conservatism, but they made little difference in the spirit and form of the worship, which continued to follow the ancient order. In some of them the Bhagavad-gītā, Nārāyaṇīya, and other epic doctrinals still remained the standard texts, which theologians connected with the ancient Upanishads and the Brahma-sūtra summarising the latter; in other centres there arose, beginning perhaps about the seventh century A.D., a series
