One object of this incarnation was " the destruction of Kansa, an oppressive monarch, and, in fact, an incar- nate Daitya or Titan, the natural enemy of the gods" (H. H.Wilson, Eeliyion of the Hindus, ii, G6). A more satisfactory object is disclosed by Krishna in the Bha- ghavat Gita : " Even though I am unborn, of change- less essence, and the lord of all which exist, yet in pre- siding over nature (jn-ah-iti), which is mine, I am born by my own mystic power (maya\ For, whenever there is a relaxation of duty, O son of Bharata ! and an in- crease of impiety, I then reproduce myself for the pro- tection of the good and the destruction of evil-doers. I am produced in every age for the purpose of establish- ing duty" (Thomson's cd. p. 30). The incarnations of Vishnu, which were multiplied to infinitude, assuming diversified forms of man, fish, and beast, because physi- cal life has in it nothing real, nothing individual, noth- ing of lasting worth, we may believe contemplated even yet a more ennobling end, an antidote to the essential evil of nature as declared in one of the Puranas: "The uncreated being abandons the body that he used in or- der to disencumber the earth of the burden that over- whelmed it, as we use one thorn to draw out another" (Burnouf, quoted by Pressense. Religions he/ore Christ, p. 63). " The thorn is material life, which Vishnu ap- parently takes on himself that he may the more effec- tually destroy it" (Pressense, ibidem'). " Crude matter and the five elements are also made to issue from Krish- na, and then all the divine beings. Narayana or Vishnu proceeds from his right side, !Mahadeva from his left, Brahma from his hand, Dharma from his breath, Saras- wati from his mouth, Lakshmi from his mind, Durga from his understanding, Radha from his left side. Three hundred millions of gopis, or female companions of Ra- dha, exude from the pores of her skin, and a like num- ber of gopas, or companions of Krishna, from the pores of his skin ; the very cows and their calves, properly the tenants of Goloka, but destined to inhabit the groves of Brindavan, arc jiroduced from the same exalted source" (H. H. Wilson. Religion of the Hindus, i, 123).
On the other hand, the Puranas disclose with regard to Krislma a human life, when considered from the most favorable stand-point, discreditable to the name and na- ture of man. It is a tissue of puerilities and licentious- ness. The miraculous deeds of Krishna were rarely for an object commensurate with the idea of a divine inter-
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position. His associations as a cowherd (gopala) with the gopis — in which capacity he is most popular as an object of adoration — are no better than the amours of classic mytliology. The splendid creation of the Gita, not unUke the human liead in the Ars Poetica, finds in tlie Puranas an unsightly complement. In his infancy he is represented as destroying in a wonderfid manner the false nurse Putana ; playing his tricks upon the cow- herds— spiUing their milk, stealing tlieir cream, and al- ways making cmming escapes ; and rooting up trees the fall of which made tlie tliree worlds to resound. In his clilldhood swallowed by an alligator, he burns his way out from the entrails of the monster, and on another oc- casion contends with and overcomes the dragon, one of whose jaws touched the ground while the other stretch- ed up to the clouds; checkmates Brahma, whose mind had been led by evU. suggestions to steal away the cat- tle and the attendant boys, by creating others which were jierfect fac-similes of those that had been stolen. Still a child, he dances in triumph on the great black serpent KaU-naja, and then, in compassion, assigns him to the abyss; hides and restores the clothes of the gopis while bathing; lifts the mountain Govarddhana on his little finger with as much ease as if it had been a lotus, that its inhabitants might be protected from the storm ; and plays blind-man's butf, assuming the form of a wolf, that he might find and restore the boys who had been abducted by anotlicr wolf. In his more mature man- hood we behold him promoting his love intrigues by miraculously corrupting the hearts of the gopis, or ac- complishing that most astounding miracle with respect to his 16,000 wives, " quas omnes una nocte invisebat et replebat" (Paulinus, Systema Brahmanicum, p. 150), in order that Nared might be convinced of his divine nature. Now he careers in triumph over battle-fields, with a blade of grass or with a single arrow shot from the all-conquering bow discomfiting entire armies: and now he yields himself to scenes of sumptuous revelry in the gardens of golden earth, through which flowed " the river whose banks were all gold and jewels, the water of which, from the reflection of rubies, appeared red, though perfectly white" — in all the license of joy sport- ing with his 10,000 wives, by whom he was siu-rounded " as lifjhtniiuj with a cloud'' — they and he pelting each other witli tlowers, thousands of lotuses floating on the surface of the river — whose water was the water of Ufe — among which innumerable bees were humming and seeking their food (Bhagavat Piirana, in Jlaurice, Hist, of Jliiidostan, ii, 327-458). Sir Wm. Jones, however, with enlarged charity, takes a modified and more pleas- ing view of the darker phases of a life the worst scenes of which are not fit to be told, " that he was pure and chaste in reality, but exhibited an appearance of exces- sive libertinism, and had wives or mistresses too numer- ous to be counted ; he was benevolent and tender, yet fomented and conducted a terrible war." See farther ilauricc, Ilindostan, ii, 258.