The Hindu sects are distinguished from each other by various fantastical streaks, in different colors, upon their faces, breasts, and arms. The followers of Krishna bear upon their forehead two white marks perpendicular to the e3-ebrows, between which a red spot is percepti- ble, in token, says Vollmer, that Krishna bore a sun upon his brow {Wurterh. d. Mythol. p. 1093; also Wil- son's Rei. of Himl. i, 41 ; Dubois, Manners of India, ch. viii, and p. 214; Trevor's India, p. 101).
Unquestionably the influence of the worship of this divinity upon the morals of the people is evih On the one hand, it embraces the hideous barbarity of Jagger- naut; and, on the other, excepting a festival of Siva, it is responsible for the most licentious of all the annual feasts (comp. Dahistan, i, 183), Entire dependence upon Krishna, or any other form of this heathen deity, says H. H.Wilson, not only obviates the necessitj^ of virtue, but sanctifies vice. Conduct is wholly immaterial. It matters not how atrocious a sinner a man may be if he paints his face, his breast, his arms with certain secta-
KRISHNA
164
KRISHNA
rial marks ; or, what is better, if ho brands them per- manently upon liis skin witli a hot iron stamp ; if he is constantly chanting hymns in honor of Vishnu; or, what is equally ctiicacious, if he spends hours in the simple reiteration of his name or names; if he die with the word Hari, Kama, or Krishna on his lips, and one thouifht of him in his mind, he may have lived a mon- ster of ini(iiiity, but he is certain of heaven (Wilson, Ri'U<j. of IJiiuliis, ii, 75 ; see also i, IGl). On the subject of the sects and worship of Krishna, considt A siutic Re- seai'ches, xvi, 1, and xvii, 169 ; Journal of the Royal Asiatic /SociV/y, ix, GO-110; H. H. Wilson, /S'e/eci Works, vol. i, ii, passim ; Penny Cyclop, xxvi, 389.
I\'. Rcsc'inblances between Ki-ishnaivn and Revealed Reliyion. — Efforts have been made in the interest of scepticism to establish a philological similarity between the words Krishna and Christ. Such specidations be- long to a past rather than to the present age, as it is no\v conceded by philologists that the two words have nothing in common. The curious are referred to Hick- son's Time and Faith, ii, 377 ; Yolney's Ruins, p. 1G5 (Am. ed. 1828 ) ; and for refutation to Maurice, Ilindos- tan, ii, 268-271. The readiness with which the scep- tical mind of our own age seizes upon and magnities even fancied resemblances is evinced by Inman, who in his first volume (^Ancient Faith, p. 402) gives an engrav- ing of Krishna strikingly like those attributed to Christ, but Avhich in the second volume, on farther acquaint- ance with the subject, he admits to be " of European and not of Indian origin, and consequently that it is worthless as illustrating the life of Krishna" (p. xxxii).
There are corresjwndences, however, some of which have already appeared in the summary of the life of Krishna, that deserve more than a passing notice. It is sufficient to adduce the more striking ones, without their correlatives in the Bible, as these will readily occur to the reader. These are as follows : that he was miraculous- ly born at midnight of a human mother, and saluted by a chorus of Devatas ; that he was cradled among cow- herds, during which period of life he was persecuted by the giant Kansa, and saved by his mother's flight; the miracles with which his life abounds, among which were the raising of the dead and the cleansing of the leprous, perhaps the only ones which particularly resembled those of Christ, for the rest were either puerile or mon- strous; his contests with serpents, which he crushed with his foot ; his descent to the regions of the dead, and his final ascent to the paradise Goloka (comp. Kleu- ker, Ahhandluny d. Kalk. Gesellsch. i, 235; Stirm, Ajm- lotjie des Christenthums, p. 181, 2d ed.)
1. The consideration of the interesting questions in- volved in these correspondences will be facilitated by bearing in mind that India, from the earliest recorded period, had sustained intimate mercantile relations with Shemitic races. " Before merchants sailed from India to Egypt, and from Egypt to India" (that is, as the con- text shows, before the period of the I'tolemies), '-Arabia Fehx was the staple (mart) both for Egyptian and In- dian goods, much as Alexandria is now for the commod- ities of Egyjit and foreign merchandise" (Arrian, Peripl. Mar. Frythr. in Ileeren's African Researches, p. 228). " If," says Ilceren, " the explicit testimony here brought forward ])roves a commercial intercourse between India and Arabia, it proves at the same time its high antiqui- ty, and that it must have been in active operation for many centuries" (ibid, p. 229). A caravan trade also extended from India to Meroe, in Ethiopia, which was its grand emporium {ibid, p. 211). Taking its rise be- yond the horizon of history, it was j'et in its zenith durhig the times of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (see also Vincent's Periplus, p. 57, etc.). It could not be othervvise than that there should have been an inter- change of religious knowledge as well as an exchange of waxes; for commerce was promoted by religion, and, to a great extent, controlled by the jirlesthood ; even its temples were stations and marts for caravans (see fur- ther, lleeren, ibid, p. 219, 225, 232). The striking re-