CHAPTERI.WHAT IS THEBHAGAVADGITA?

In the whole literature of the world there are few poems worthy of comparison, either in point of general interest, or of practical influence, with theBhagavadgītā. It is a philosophical work, yet fresh and readable as poetry; a book of devotion, yet drawing its main inspiration from speculative systems; a dramatic scene from the most fateful battle of early Indian story, yet breathing the leisure and the subtleties of the schools; founded on a metaphysical theory originally atheistic,[1]yet teaching the most reverent adoration of the Lord of all: where shall we find a more fascinating study? Then its influence on educated India has been and still is without a rival. Everybody praises the Upanishads, but very few read them; here and there one finds a student who turns the pages of a Sūtra or looks into Sankara or Rāmānuja, but the most are content to believe without seeing. TheGītā, on the other hand, is read and loved by every educated man. Nor is there any need to apologize for this partiality: the Divine Song is the loveliest flower in the garden of Sanskrit literature.

For the Western mind also the poem has many attractions. The lofty sublimity to which it so often rises, the practical character of much of its teaching, the enthusiastic devotion to the one Lord which breathes through it, and the numerous resemblances it shows to the words of Christ, fill it with unusual interest for men of the West. But while it has many points of affinity with the thought and the religion of Europe, it is nevertheless a genuineproduct of the soil;[2]indeed it is all the more fit to represent the genius of India that its thought and its poetry are lofty enough to draw the eyes of the West.

What, then, is theGītā? Can we find our way to the fountain whence the clear stream flows?

A.When the dwelling-place of the ancient Aryan tribes was partly on the outer, partly on the inner, side of the Indus (primeval patronymic of both India and her religion), and the tribesmen were equally at home on the farm and on the battlefield, then it was that the mass of the lyrics that form theRigvedawere made. We need not stay to set forth the various ways in which this unique body of poetry is of value to modern thought. For us it is of interest because it gives us the earliest glimpse of the religion of the Indo-Aryans. That religion is polytheistic and naturalistic. The Vedic hymns laud the powers of nature and natural phenomena as personal gods. They praise also, as distinct powers, the departed fathers. Such is undoubtedly the general character of the religion of that age. On the other hand, the hymns to Varuna bring us very near monotheism indeed.[3]

It is, however, only at a later period when the Aryan conquest had moved out of the Punjab to the South and West, and just on the eve of the formation of theRigvedaas a collection of religious hymns, that we find the beginnings of philosophic speculation.[4]A few hymns, chiefly in the tenth Mondol, ask questions about the origin of the universe, and venture some naive guesses on that tremendous subject. Some of the hymns[5]take for granted the existence of primeval matter, and ask how or by whom it was transformed into acosmos. In others[6]there is more monotheistic feeling, and a Creator, either Hiranyagarbha orVisvakarman, is described. In others[7]the strain of thought is agnostic.

B.With the collection of the hymns of theRigvedawe pass into a new and very different period, the literature of which is altogether priestly. To this age belong the two great sacerdotal manuals, theSāmaveda[8]or Chant-book, and theYajurveda[9]or Sacrifice-book, and those extraordinary collections of priestly learning, mythology and mysticism, the Brāhmanas.[10]These books introduce us to changed times and changed men, to new places and a new range of ideas. The fresh poetry of the youth of India has given place to the most prosaic and uninteresting disquisitions in the whole world.[11]The home of this literature is the great holy land of Brahman culture, stretching from the Sutlej on the West to the junction of the Jumna and the Ganges at Prayāga.[12]In this period the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul first appears.[13]

C.The Aranyakas[14]and Upanishads[15]place before us a further development of Indian religion. Reflection led to the perception of the great truth, that the kernel of religion is not the ritual act but the heart of piety behind it. Many a man who had found the endless formulæ and the showy ceremonial of the sacrifice a serious hindrance to real religion, sought refuge from the noise and distraction of the popular cult in the lonely silence of forest or desert. To run over the sacrifice in one’s own mind, they reasoned, was as acceptable to the gods as to kill the horse or to pour the ghee upon the altar fire. But they soon reached the further position, that for the man who has attainedTRUE KNOWLEDGEsacrifice is altogether unnecessary. For knowledge of the world-soul emancipates a man from the chain of births anddeaths and leads to true felicity. The main purpose, thus, of the Upanishads, is to expound the nature of the world-soul. Their teaching is by no means uniform. Not only do the separate treatises differ the one from the other; contradictory ideas are frequently to be met with in the same book. They all tend to idealistic monism; they all agree in identifying the soul of man with the world-soul; but on the questions, whether the latter is personal or impersonal, how spirit and matter are related, and how the human soul will join the divine soul after death, there is no unanimity.[16]

There is thus no speculative system to be drawn from these books. Those of their ideas that are held with settled, serious conviction, are taught rather dogmatically than philosophically; and, on the other hand, where there is freedom of thought, there is rather a groping after the truth than any definite train of illuminative reasoning. Yet this occasional, conversational, unconventional character gives these simple and sincere treatises their greatest charm, and fits them for that devotional use to which so many generations of pious readers have put them. To this early period there belong only the first great group of prose Upanishads, theBrihadāranyaka,Chāndogya,Taittirīya,Aitareya,Kaushītakiand parts of theKena.[17]

D.In bold contrast to this unsystematic meditation on the Eternal Spirit there stands out the severe, clear-cut, scientific system of Kapila,[18]the first Indian thinker who dared to trust the unaided human mind. Buddhist tradition recognizes that he preceded Buddha, and connects him with Kapila-vastu, the birth-place of Buddha, the site of which was discovered as recently as December 1896.[19]He drew a sharp distinction between matter and spirit and declared both to be eternal, without beginning and without end. The material universe develops in accordancewith certain laws out of primeval matter,prakriti. Spirit, on the other hand, exists as an indefinite number of individual souls, each eternal. There is no supreme divine spirit. The value of this system lies chiefly in its severely logical method, which demands that all reasoning shall proceed from the known elements of experience. It has exercised a very great influence on Indian thought, partly by its method, but still more perhaps through its cardinal ideas, the eternity of matter, the eternity of individual souls, the threegunas, the great cosmic periods, andkaivalya,i. e., the attainment of salvation through the separation of the soul from matter. This great system is known by the name Sānkhya,i. e., enumeration, seemingly on account of the numbering of the twenty-fivetattvas, or principles, which it sets forth.[20]

Such is theSānkhyasystem; but it would be dangerous to affirm that the whole came from Kapila; for no treatise written by him has come down. The earliest systematic manual of the philosophy extant to-day is theSānkhya-Kārikāof Isvara-Krishna, which dates from the early Christian centuries.[21]

E.Shortly after the Sānkhya system, and in close dependence upon it, there appeared Buddhism and Jainism; but as these great religions exercised no very definite influence on the main stream of Indian thought for several centuries, we shall not linger over them.

F.We notice next the second great group of Upanishads, theKatha,Isā,Svetāsvatara,Mundaka,Mahānārāyana,[22]which are all written in verse. That this group is later than the great prose Upanishads is abundantly clear from the changed form as well as from the more developed matter. “As contrasted with the five above-mentioned Upanishads with their awkward Brāhmana style and their allegorical interpretations of the ritual, theKatha Upanishadbelongs to a very different period, a time in which men began to coin the gold of Upanishad thought into separate metrical aphorisms, and to arrange them together in a more or less loose connection.”[23]Further signs of their belongingto another stage of thought are their references, more or less clear, to the Sānkhya and Yoga philosophies,[24]and their tendency to adopt the doctrine of Grace,[25]i.e., that salvation is not a fruit of true knowledge, but a gift of God. The idea ofBhakti, which became afterwards so popular, appears in this group of Upanishads only once.[26]Here also for the first time in Sanskrit literature the wordSānkhyaoccurs as the name of a system.[27]

But while these five metrical treatises are clearly later than the prose Upanishads, scholars are not agreed on the question of their relation to the great systems. Some[28]hold that theKathais earlier, others[29]that it is later, than Buddhism; Weber[30]believes that theSvetāsvatara,Mundaka, andMahānārāyanadepend not only on Kapila’s system, but also on theYoga Sūtrasof Patanjali (see below), while others[31]believe that in these Upanishads we have scattered pieces of teaching which were later systematized. But whatever be the truth on these points, it is clear that these five are posterior to the first group, that their relative age isKatha,Isā,Svetāsvatara,MundakaandMahānārāyana,[32]and that this last belongs to quite a late date.[33]Along with these verse Upanishads we may take three prose works, which are manifestly still later,[34]thePrasna,MaitrāyanīyaandMāndūkya.

G.Several centuries after the Sānkhya there appeared the Yoga philosophy, the text-book of which is theYoga Sūtras. According to Indian tradition the founder of the school and the author of the Sūtras was Patanjali,[35]the well-known scholar who wrote theMahābhāshyaon Pānini’s grammar. He accepts the metaphysics of the Sānkhya system, but postulates the existence of a personal god, and urges the value of Yoga practices for the attainment ofKaivalya, that isolation of the soul from matter,which, according to Kapila, is true salvation. Thus not one of the three main elements of his system is original; for Yoga practices have existed from a very early date in India. Yet his system is sufficiently marked off from others, first by his combination of Yoga practices with Sānkhya principles and a theistic theology, and, secondly, by his systematic treatment of Yoga methods.[36]

H.Later still than the Yoga philosophy is the systematic statement of the Vedānta point of view by Bādarāyana in his Sūtras, which are known either asBrahma-sūtras,Sārīraka-sūtrasorVedānta-sūtras.[37]

I.We next notice the latest development of Upanishad teaching, namely, that found in the Upanishads of theAtharvaveda. With the exception of three, namely, theMundaka,PrasnaandMāndūkyaUpanishads, which we have already noticed, they are all very late.[38]They fall into four great groups, according as they teach (a) pure Vedantism, (b) Yoga practices, (c) the life of the Sannyāsin, or (d) Sectarianism.[39]For our purpose the last of the four is of the most importance. “These sectarian treatises interpret the popular gods Siva (under various names, such as Isāna, Mahesvara, Mahādeva) and Vishnu (as Nārāyana and Nrishinha) as personifications of the Atman. The different Avatārs of Vishnu are here regarded as human manifestations of the Atman.”[40]Let readers note that the doctrine of Avatārs is quite unknown in the Vedas, the Brāhmanas, the early Upanishads and the Sūtras.[41]We may also note that in groups (a) and (b) we find what is not found in earlier Upanishads, namely, the phraseSānkhya-Yogaused as the name of a system.[42]Here also the doctrines of Grace andBhakti, the beginnings of which we found in the verse Upanishads, are regularly taught.

J.The last development that we need mention is the teaching of theMahābhārataandManu. We take them together, not only because each of them is the final product of long centuries of growth and compilation, but because they are so closely related to each other in origin, that it is hardly possible to take them separately.[43]In the first book of theMahābhāratawe are told that the poem originally consisted of only 8,800slokas, and that at a later date the number was 24,000. The complete work now contains over 100,000slokas.[44]We need not here enquire when the simple heroic lays were composed, which lie at the basis of the great composition as it has come down to us; nor need we stay to decide at what period it finally reached its present labyrinthine structure and immense dimensions.[45]It is sufficient for our purpose to notice that scientific investigations have laid bare four stages in the formation of the Epic:—(a) early heroic songs, strung together into some kind of unity: this is the stage recognised in BookI, when the poem had only 8,800slokas, and is in all probability the point at which it is referred to by Asvalāyana; (b) a Mahābhārata story with Pandu heroes, and Krishna as a demi-god: this is the form in which it had 24,000slokas, and is the stage of the poem referred to by Pānini; (c) the Epic re-cast, with Krishna as All-god, and a great deal of didactic matter added; (d) later interpolations.[46]Scholars are able to fix, within certain limits, the dates of these various stages. We need not attempt to be so precise: for us it is enough thatthe representation of Krishna as the Atman belongs to the third stage of the growth of the Epic. Parallel with this third stage is the final redaction ofManu.[47]The philosophic standpoint of these two great works is practically the same, being now theSānkhya-Yoga, now a mixture of Sānkhya, Yoga and Vedantic elements.[48]

But the main thing to notice is that in these books we are already in modern Hinduism. Turning from the Vedas to them we find ourselves in an altogether new world. There are many new gods; most of the old divinities have fallen to subordinate places. New customs, new names and ideas are found everywhere. The language too has changed: new words, new expressions and new forms occur in plenty; old words occur in new senses; while many others have disappeared.[49]

Let us now turn to theGītā. What is its place in this long succession? Clearly it is posterior, not only to our first, but also to our second group of Upanishads. For it echoes theKatha, theSvetāsvatara, and several of the others repeatedly;[50]its versification is decidedly later in character;[51]the doctrines of Grace and ofBhakti, which are found in these Upanishads only in germ, are fully developed in theGītā;[52]while the whole theory of Krishna is a fresh growth.

TheGītāmay also be shewn to belong to the same age as the Atharvan Upanishads. It has in common with them (a) the identification of Krishna and Vishnu with theAtman, (b) the doctrine of Avatārs,[53](c) the doctrines of Grace andBhakti, (d) the Sānkhya-Yoga.

But we may go further, and show that theGītāis in its teaching, in general, parallel with the third stage of theMahābhārataand withManu. For while the usual philosophic standpoint in the Song is Sānkhya-Yoga, there are frequent lapses to the Vedānta; and there is an evident effort here and there to combine all three.[54]This is precisely the position ofManuand the Epic, as we have seen. Note that in theGītāthe Yoga philosophy is already old, so old that it has fallen into decay, and requires to be resuscitated.[55]The Sānkhya is not a loose group of ideas, but a formed system, as appears from the phrasesSānkhya-Kritānta[56]andGuna-sankhyāna.[57]Kapila, its author, is so far in the past that heis canonized as the chief of theSiddhas.[58]There are many minor points which theGītāholds in common with theMahābhārata, and which are not found earlier. The latter half of the tenth chapter is full of Epic mythology. There Skanda is the great warrior-god,[59]as in theMahābhārata,[60]there too we find the horse Uccaihsravas,[61]the elephant Airāvata,[62]the snake Vāsuki,[63]the fish Makara.[64]Nirvānais used in theGītā[65]for ‘highest bliss,’ ‘Brahmic bliss,’ precisely as in the Epic.[66]In theMahābhārataBhīshma, after receiving his mortal wound, has to wait for theUttarāyana(the northward journey of the sun),i. e., he has to wait until the sun passes the southern solstice, before he can die in safety.[67]In theGītāwe find a similar idea: only those devotees who die during theUttarāyanago to Brahman; those who die during theDakshināvanareturn to earth.[68]This dogma is not found in the early Upanishads nor yet in the Sūtras.[69]

A study of the language of theGītā[70]leads to the same conclusion. A portion of its vocabulary is the same as that of the first group of Upanishads; a larger portion coincides with our second group; a still larger coincides with the diction of the Atharvan group; and finally, much that is found in no Upanishad is characteristic of the Epic.

We need not attempt to fix the date[71]of the poem, for that is not only impossible as yet, but is quite unnecessary for our purpose.What we wish to do is to show that the religious literature of India displays a long, regular, evolutionary process, that theGītābelongs to the same period as the third stage of theMahābhārata, and is itself clearly the result of all the preceding development.

Can we then accept the declaration of the poem itself, that it was uttered by Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra?—That necessarily depends upon the history and the chronology. At what point then in the historical development of the literature which we have been studying does the famous battle stand?—According to all scholars the great war and the compilation of theVedasboth belong to the same period.[72]

The results of our study may, therefore, be tabulated as follows, with the proviso that the long process of the growth of the Epic cannot be fully represented:—

The Hymns of the Vedas.Compilation of the Vedas . . . KURUKSHETRA.The Brāhmanas.The prose Upanishads.Kapila.Buddhism and Jainism.The verse Upanishads.Patanjali.Bādarāyana.The Atharvan Upanishads.The third stage of the Epic andManu. . . THE GITA.

The Hymns of the Vedas.

Compilation of the Vedas . . . KURUKSHETRA.

The Brāhmanas.

The prose Upanishads.

Kapila.

Buddhism and Jainism.

The verse Upanishads.

Patanjali.

Bādarāyana.

The Atharvan Upanishads.

The third stage of the Epic andManu. . . THE GITA.

It has thus become perfectly clear thatThe Gītā cannot have been uttered on the battlefield of Kurukshetra; for it is the last member of a long series, the final product of a clearly defined and elaborate process of development. To ascribe theGītāto the age of Kurukshetra is much the same as if one were to ascribe the poetry of Tennyson to the age of Alfred the Great. A thousand years intervene; the thought and toil of a millennium were needed to produce the great result.

Had Krishna uttered these doctrines on the famous battlefield, we should inevitably have found references to them in the literature produced during the following centuries. But where in the Brāhmanas do we find any of the leading ideas of theGītā? Even if men had disbelieved Krishna, his claim to be God incarnate would at least have drawn out a protest; but in no single Brāhmana or early Upanishad is there the slightest hint of anything of the kind. So far from there being any corroboration of the great myth in early literature, there is the clearest proof that it is false. In theKāthakarecension of theBlack Yajur Vedaking Dhritarāshtra is mentioned as a well-known person[73]; yet in the whole literature of the Black Yajur there is no suggestion that Krishna claimed divine honours.The Satapatha Brāhmana, which is a product of theKuru-Panchālacountry,[74]contains the names of a number of the heroes of the great war,[75]but never refers to Krishna as God incarnate; while in theChāndogya Upanishad,[76]which belongs to the same district,[77]he is spoken of merely as a man: he is mentioned as a pupil of Ghora Angirasa and is called Krishna Devakiputra.[78]Nay, even in the earliest part of theMahābhārataitself Krishna is only a great chief, and not a deity at all.[79]Finally, the references to Pandu heroes and to the worship of Krishna and Arjuna in Pānini,[80]would lead to the conclusion that in Pānini’s day Krishna was not regarded as the supreme God, but as one among many;[81]and this cautious inference is corroborated by the fact that theMahābhāshyaitself does not recognize him as the incarnation of Brahma, but as a hero and demi-god.[82]Thus the whole of the Vedic literature, and the whole of the Sūtra literature, are destitute of a single reference to Krishna as the incarnation of the Supreme.There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this overwhelming mass of evidence.[83]

It is strange that educated Hindus should have clung so long to the idea that theGītāis a real utterance of Krishna. The very fact that the poem has always been regarded, not asSruti, but simply asSmriti, should have been enough to suggest the truth. A piece of genuine divine teaching, uttered in such circumstances, and before the composition of the earliest Upanishads, would have inevitably found a place among the most authoritative scriptures of the faith. The fact of its having been always regarded asSmritiis sufficient proof by itself that the book does not belong to the Vedic age at all. Another consideration ought also by itself to have been sufficient to save Hindus from such a grave error, namely, this, thatno great religious advance or upheaval followed the time when Krishna is supposed to have lived and taught. Contrast the mighty revolutions that followed the work of Buddha, of Christ and of Mahommed; and the emptiness of the Krishna claim will become at once apparent.

Again, the subject of all the early Upanishads is the nature of the Supreme Spirit, whether called theAtmanorBrahma. Ifon the field of Kurukshetra, Krishna had claimed to be the Supreme, as theGītāsays he did, can any one believe that the claim could have been passed unnoticed in the Upanishads? Krishna is mentioned in theChāndogya; Brahma is the subject of theChāndogya: yet there is not the slightest hint anywhere that Brahma has been incarnated, far less that Krishna is Brahma. Such evidence is surely irresistible.

One reason why the truth about this myth has been so long in finding its way into the minds of educated Hindus is undoubtedly to be found in the wretchedly inadequate way in which Sanskrit literature is taught in the Universities of India. In Calcutta at least most men who take Sanskrit as one of their subjects for theB. A.Degree get through their examination without having the slightest knowledge of the history of the literature.[84]For some curious results of this very deficient training, see the Appendix.

With Krishna, all the other so-called Avatārs vanish; for they rest on foundations still more flimsy and fanciful. They merely serve as signal proofs of the tendency inherent in the Hindu mind to believe in incarnations and to see such around them. This tendency was already living and creative long before the Christian era, and it has kept its vitality down to the present day; for though Chaitanya, the sixteenth-century reformer, is the most noteworthy of those who within recent times have been counted Avatārs, he is by no means the last: the late Ramkrishna Paramhamsa was regarded as such,[85]and some of her admirers claim the same honour for Mrs. Annie Besant.[86]Further, this making of Avatārs is but one aspect of that passion for deifying men which has characterized Hinduism from first to last,[87]a passion which has set many a modern Englishman among the gods. Even such a whole-hearted Christian as John Nicholson did not escape.[88]

The story, then, that Krishna uttered the Song on the battlefield, is a pious imagination. All scholars hold the war to be historical; Krishna’s name can be traced in the literature from the Upanishads downwards; it is possible, or even probable, that he was a Kshattriya prince[89]who fought in the war; butthe assertion that on the field he claimed to be the supreme being, is absolutely negatived by all the early history and literature of India.

How then are we to account for theGītā? Whence came its power and its beauty? and how did it reach the form it has?—We must recognise the action of three factors in the formation of the Song, the philosophy, the worship of Krishna, and the author. We have already traced in outline the genesis of the philosophy; there remain the cult and the author.

All our scholars recognize that Krishna-worship has existed in India since the fourth centuryB. C.at least; for there can be no doubt that, when Megasthenes says that Herakles was worshipped in Methora and Kleisobora,[90]he means that Krishna was worshipped in Mathura and Krishnapur. How much further back the cult goes we have no means of learning. Nor does it really matter for our purpose. The important thing to realize is the existence of this worship of Krishna, before his identification with Vishnu[91]and final exaltation to the place of the supreme pantheistic divinity.

The author of theGītāwas clearly a man of wide and deep culture. He had filled his mind with the best religious philosophy of his country. He was catholic rather than critical, more inclined to piece things together than to worry over the differencesbetween them. Each of the philosophic systems appealed to his sympathetic mind: he was more impressed with the value of each than with the distinctions between them. But his was not only a cultured but a most reverent mind. He was as fully in sympathy with Krishna-worship as with the philosophy of the Atman. Indeed, it was the union of these qualities in him that fitted him to produce the noblest and purest expression of modern Hinduism. For Hinduism is just the marriage of ancient Brāhmanical thought and law with the popular cults. But without his splendid literary gifts the miracle would not have been possible. The beauty, precision and power of the diction of the poem, and its dignity of thought, rising now and then to sublimity, reveal but one aspect of his masterly literary ability. Much of the success of the poem arises from his genuine appreciation of the early heroic poems, which he heard recited around him, and from his consequent decision to make his own Song, in one sense at least, a heroic poem. Lastly, there is the shaping spirit of imagination, without which no man can be a real poet. With him this power was introspective rather than dramatic. No poet with any genuine dramatic faculty would have dreamed of representing a warrior as entering on a long philosophic discussion on the field of battle at the very moment when the armies stood ready to clash. On the other hand, what marvellous insight is displayed in his representation of Krishna! Who else could have imagined with such success how an incarnate god would speak of himself? Nor must we pass on without noticing that, though the situation in which the Song is supposed to have been produced is an impossible one, yet for the author’s purpose it is most admirably conceived: how otherwise could the main thought of the book—philosophic calm leading to disinterested action—have been so vividly impressed on the imagination?

This author, then, formed the idea of combining the loftiest philosophy of his country with the worship of Krishna. He would intertwine the speculative thought that satisfied the intellect with the fervid devotion which even the uncultured felt for a god who was believed to have walked the earth. Philosophy would thus come nearer religion, while religion would be placed on far surer intellectual ground. His tastes led him to connect his workwith the romantic poems of the day; his genius suggested the situation, a dialogue between a noble knight and the incarnate divinity; his catholicity taught him to interweave the Sānkhya with the Yoga and both with the Vedānta; and as we have seen, his penetrative imagination was equal to the creation of the subjective consciousness of a god-man.

We can now answer the question which stands at the head of this chapter, What is theBhagavadgītā? It consists of two distinct elements, one old, one original. The philosophy is old; for it is only a very imperfect combination[92]of what is taught in earlier books. The original element is the teaching put into Krishna’s mouth about his own person and the relation in which he stands to his own worshippers and to others. Of this part of the teaching of theGītāwe here give a brief analysis:—

Krishna is first of all the source of the visible world. All comes from him,[93]all rests in him.[94]At the end of a Kalpa everything returns to him,[95]and is again reproduced.[96]He pervades all things;[97]and again, in another sense, he is all that is best and most beautiful in nature and in man.[98]But while Krishna is thus the supreme power in the universe,[99]he is altogether without personal interest in the activity therein displayed:[100]he sits unconcerned,[101]always engaged in action,[102]yet controlling his own nature,[103]and therefore never becoming boundby the results of his action.[104]This conception of the Supreme, as at once the centre of all activity and yet completely detached, enables the author, on the one hand, to soften the seemingly hopeless contradiction involved in identifying the king, warrior and demon-slayer, Krishna, with the passionless, characterlessAtman[105]of the Upanishads, and, on the other to hold up Krishna as the supreme example of Action Yoga.

We now turn to Krishna’s relation to his worshippers. Knowledge is good;[106]mental concentration is better;[107]disinterested action is better than either;[108]but the supreme wisdom is faith in Krishna and boundless devotion to him.[109]Such is the teaching of theGītā. The worst epithets are kept for those who fail to recognise him as the Supreme, who disregard him, carp at him, hate him.[110]To those who resort to Krishna,[111]who place faith in him,[112]who shower on him their love, devotion and worship,[113]who rest on him,[114]think of him[115]and remember him[116]at all times,—to them are promised forgiveness,[117]release from thebonds of action,[118]attainment of tranquillity,[119]true knowledge[120]and final bliss[121]in Krishna.[122]

Since all the gods come from Krishna,[123]and since he is in the last resort the sole reality,[124]worship offered to other gods is in a sense offered to him.[125]He accepts it and rewards it.[126]This is in accordance with his indifference to men: to him no one is hateful, no one dear.[127]Yet the highest blessings fall only to those who recognize him directly.[128]

Clearly our author formed his conception of the man-god with great skill, and fitted it into his general scheme with all the care and precision he was capable of. On this elaboration of the self-consciousness of Krishna he concentrated all his intellectual and imaginative powers. And with what unequalled success! Could any greater compliment be paid an author than to have sixty generations of cultured readers take the creation of his mind for a transcript from history?

The masses of evidence we have marshalled to prove that Krishna never claimed to be God, may be briefly summarised as follows:—

1. The situation in which theGītāis said to have been uttered at once strikes the historical student as suspicious: one can scarcely believe that there was ever a battle in which such a thing could have taken place; and, on the other hand, it makes such an excellent background to the theory of Action Yoga, that one cannot help believing that it was invented for the very purpose. Further investigation leads to the following results:—

2. The characteristic religious and philosophical ideas of theGītāare not found in any books produced immediately after the age of Kurukshetra. If we start with the teaching of thatage, we have to trace the stages of a long and clearly-marked development before we reach the ideas of theGītā.

3. The diction of theGītāis not the Vedic Sanskrit of the earlyBrāhmanas(which are the literature of the period following Kurukshetra), but belongs to a very much later stage of the language.

4. The fact that theGītāis notsruti, butsmriti, proves that it comes neither from Krishna, nor from the time of Kurukshetra.

5. Krishna Devakiputra is known in the later Vedic literature as a man, and in the Sūtra literature as a hero or demi-god, but never as the supreme being.

6. The fact that there is not a single reference in the whole of the Vedic literature, nor yet in the Sūtra literature, to Krishna as the incarnation of Brahma, makes it impossible for us to believe that at the battle of Kurukshetra he claimed to be such.

7. The fact that there was no revival or reformation of religion in the age of Kurukshetra proves that God was not incarnated then.

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