4. It was the fashion earlj' in the present century to search out astronomical allusions in Krishna, and resem- blances to Apollo, the mythological counterpart to the sun, but these have given place to sounder criticism. Recent researches favor the view that no great antiq- uity is to be attributed to Krishna as an olrject of relig- ious regard. That some one bearing that name may have figured as a local hero in the early histor}' of In- dia, and even as far back as the period preceding the war of the Mahabharata, is not improbable (conip. Wil- son, Reliyion of the Hindus, ii, G5, G6). The allusions on classical pages ser\'e to justify such a conclusion.
5. But it is important to remember that Krishnaism nowhere appears in the Yedas, the most ancient scrip- tures of the Hindu. " Krishna worship is the most modern of all the philosophical and religious systems which have divided India into rival sects. Founded upon the theory of successive incarnations which neither the Yedas nor the legislators of the first Brahmanical epoch admitted, Krishnaism differs in so many points from the fiiiths peculiar to India that avo are tempted to regard it as borrowed from foreign philosophies and re- ligions" (M. Pavio, Bhagavat Bason Askand, Prof. p. xi ; in like manner Lassen, Tndische Alterthitmsk. i, 488; ii, 1107 ; Pri chard, Pfinjit. Mythology, p. 259, with citations from Colebrooke ; Max !M tiller, Chips, ii, 75, Amer. edit. ; A siatic Researches, viii, 494). " It is believed," says H, H. Wilson cautiously, that llama and Krishna " are un- noticed in authentic passages of the Sanhita or collected prayers, and there is no mention of the latter as Go- vinda or Gopala, the infant co^vhord, or as the uncouth and anomalous Jaggernaut. They are mentioned in some of the Upanishads, supplementary treatises of the Vedas, but these compositions arc evidently, from their style, of later date than the Yedas, and some of them, especially those referring to Kama and Krishna, are of very questionable authenticity" {ibid, ii, G5). Compare Wilson's Trunsl. of the Rig Veda Sanhita, i, 260, 313, 315 ; ii, 35, note b ; iii, 148, note 7.
At the time of its first translation into English by Wilkins, an immense antiquity was claimed for the Bha- gavat Gita (see above, sec. i ), but this is now generally admitted to be an interpolation in the Mahabharata, and
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to have been produced subsequently to the rise not only of Christianity, but of Krishnaism itself. Lassen accords it a place in the later history of Hindu reUgions, when " the Yishnuitcs broke up into sects and sought to bring their religious dogmas into harmony with the theories of phildsiipliy" (^Imliiiche Alt. ii, 494 ; Hardwick, i, 241).
As to the I'urdnas, which are almost the sole author- ities for those events in the Ufe of Krishna (exclusive of his victorious contest with the serpent) that most re- semble tlie life of Christ, they are, in their present form, unquestionably of modern origin. They abound in le- gends tliat may properly be regarded as piirana (an- cient), but bear upon their face sectarian marks, which betray both their animus and their age. They are eigh- teen in number, and some of them are voluminous. The Puranas themselves in many cases ascribe their author- ship to others than Vyasa, " and they offer many inter- nal proofs that they are the work of various hands and of different dates, none of which are of very high antiq- uity. I believe the oldest of them not to be anterior to the 8th or 9th century, and the most recent to be not above three or four centuries old. . . . The determina- tion of their modern and unauthenticated composition deprives them of the sacred character which they have usurped, dcstroj's their credit, impairs their influence, and strikes away the main prop on which at present the great mass of Hindu idolatry and superstition relies" (H. H. Wilson, JRelir/. of the Hindus, ii, 68). There is but little doubt that the Brahmans are right in referring the authorship of the Bhagavata, the most popular of the Puranas (from which we have quoted so freely in the summary of Krishna's Ufe), to Vopadeva, who flour- ished in the l'2th century (ibid, p. 69 ; sec also preface to Wilson's Vishnu Purand). Bentley {Vieio of Ancient Asfronomt/, i, bk. ii, chap, ii) informs us that he obtained access to the Janampatra, or horoscope of Krishna, and was enabled to discover from it that he is reputed to have been born on the 2od of the moon of Sravana, in the lunar mansion Rohini, at midnight, the positions of the sun, and moon, and five planets being at the same time assigned ; from which he deduced the date of the pretended nativitj' to be Aug. 7, A.D. GOO. In Mr. Bent- ley's opinion, perhaps a fanciful one, Krishna himself was one of the Hindu personifications of time, which view he supports by Krishna's own declaration, '• I am time, the destroyer of mankind matured, come hither to seize at once on all these who stand before us." See farther, on the astronomical view, Greswell's Fasti Ca- tholici, iv, 88 ; Cardinal Wiseman's Led, ii, 1-28 ; Tom- kins's llidsean Prize Lectures, p. 35^1; \V. A. Butler's Ancient I'hilos. i, 247.