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Section XIII.— THE SUN-GODS OF LATER HINDU MYTHOLOGY.
If it be urged that the attribution to Krishna of quahties or chap powers belonging to other deities is a mere device by which his devotees sought to supersede the more ancient gods, the answer must Vishnu as be that nothing is done in his case which has not been done in the case of almost every other member of the great company of the gods, and that the systematic adoption of this method is itself conclusive proof of the looseness and flexibility of the materials of which the cumbrous mythology of the Hindu epic poems is composed. As being Vishnu, Krishna performs all the feats of that god.
" And thou, Krishna, of the Yadava race, having become the son of Aditi and being called Vishnu, the younger brother of Indra, the all-pervading, becoming a child, and vexer of thy foes, hast by thy energy traversed the sky, the atmosphere, and the earth in three strides." ^
He is thus also identified with Hari or the dwarf Vishnu, a myth Parentage which carries us to that of the child Hermes as well as to the story ° "^ "^ of the limping Hephaistos. As the son of Nanda, the bull, he is Govinda, a name which gave rise in times later than those of the Mahabharata to the stories of his life with the cowherds and his dalliance with their wives ; but in the Mahabharata he is already the protector of cattle, and like Herakles slays the bull which ravaged the herds.^ His name Krishna, again, is connected with another parentage, which makes him the progeny of the black hair of Hari, the dwarf Vishnu.^ But he is also Hari himself, and Hari is Nara- yana, "the god who transcends all, the minutest of the minute, the vastest of the vast, the greatest of the great." In short, the inter- change or contradiction is undisguised, for " he is the soul of all, the omniscient, the all, the all-knowing, the producer of all, the god whom the goddess Devaki bore to Vishnu.^ Elsewhere Krishna speaks of himself as the maker of the Rudras and the Vasus, as both the priest and the victim, and adds,
" Know that Dharma (righteousness) is my beloved firstborn mental son, whose nature is to have compassion on all creatures. In his character I exist among men, both present and past, passing through many varieties of mundane existence. I am Vishnu, Brahma, Indra, and the source as well as the destruction of things, the creator
' Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. iiS. * /b. 206.
- Jb. 221. * lb. 224.
