OCTOBER, 1873 ]

matter.

CHRISTIAN TRACES IN THE BEIAGAVAD GITA.

According to Lassen (I. 623), the

for.

285

(4) The legend in the Mahābhārata of

passages in the Mahābhārata in which Krishna

Śvetadvipa, and the revelation which is made

has divine honours attributed to him are of

there to Narada by Bhagavat himself, shows that Indian tradition bore testimony to such an influence. (5) The legends of Krishna's birth, the solemn celebration of his birthday, in the honoursof which his mother, Devaki, participates, and finally his life as a herdsman, a phase the fur thest removed from the original representation, can only be explained by the influence of Chris tian legends, which, received one after the other by individual Indians in Christian lands, were modified to suit their own ways of thought, and may also have been affected by the labours

later origin (belong in fact, as I think, to the Purāna epoch), and the Krishna-cultus proper is not found before the fifth or sixth century.” Again (ibid. II. 398, &c.) : “Individual Chris tian teachers, if they had an imposing person ality, such as I believe I trace in the legend of

Śveta, would not be without influence in the early time, even if after their death, without any pressure from outside, their doctrine became more and more indefinite, losing its originality and suiting itself to the Indian conception. Still greater however, as has been the case in all lands and at all times, must have been the in

fluence exerted by natives of India, who filled up in their own way what they had learned in foreign countries. Not that such were themselves Chris.

tians. But in their hearts, sufficiently prepared by the current tendency of Indian philosophy towards a concrete unity, the doctrine of faith (bhakti) in theincarnate Christ found fruitful soil. In him they may have at once recognised their

own hero, Krishna,just as the Greeks discovered everywhere their Heracles and Dionysos. If till then they had honoured Krishna as a hero— and he seems to have been originally a clearly defined human personality—the fact that in a strange land they found a god of the same name

so highly honoured would of itself be proof of his divinity. The whole question, I think, turns on the following points:–(1) The reciprocal action and mutual influence of Gnostic and

of individual Christian teachers down to the latest times.” Nor does Weber stand alone in his view -

concerning the influence of Christianity on the legends of Krishna. The English writer Talboys Wheeler, in his LIistory of India, calls some of these legends (pp. 470, 471) “a travesty of Christianity,” and asserts of others that they have been borrowed directly from the Gospel. “The healing of the woman who had been bowed down for eighteen years, and who was made straight by Christ on the sabbath day, and the incident of the woman who broke an

alabaster box of spikenard and poured it upon his head, seem to have been thrown together in the legend of Kubja.”f Noteworthy also are the words of the anonymous reviewer of Wheeler's book in the Athenaeum (No. 2076, 10th Aug.

1867), who says expressly: “It must be admitted, then, that there are most remarkable coinci

Indian conceptions in the first centuries of the

dences between the history of Krishna and that

Christian era are evident, however difficult it

of Christ.

may be at present to say what in each is pecu

being proof positive that Christianity was intro

liar to it or borrowed from the other. (2) The worship of Krishna as sole god is one of the latest phases of Indian religious systems, of

duced into India at an epoch when there is

This being the case, and there

good reason to suppose the episodes which refer to Krishna were inserted in the Mahābhārata,

which there is no trace in Varāhamihira, who

the obvious inference is that the Brahmans took

mentions Krishna, but only in passing. (3) This worship of Krishna as sole god has no intelli gible connection with his earlier position in the

from the Gospel such things as suited them." From these quotations it is clear that the

Brahmanical legends. There is a gap between the two, which apparently nothing but the sup position of an external influence can account

influence of Christian doctrines and “legends"

(as Weber calls the relations in the Gospel) on the development of later Brahmanical wisdom has already been recognised by Indian anti

into India back to the apostles Thomas and Bartholomew.

and were found by the Portuguese. And the Brahmans would much more readily become acquainted with the writings of the New Testiment through native, Indian Christians than by journeys of Brahmans to Alexandria and

We know for certain that there were numerous Christian

Asia Minor.

communities in India in the first century of the Christian era, which continued under the name of Thomas Christians,

+ Conf. Luke, xiii. 10-17; Mark, xiv. 3; Matthew, xxvi. 6, 7; John, xii. 3.-ED. I. A.

• Weber does not seem to me to lay sufficient stress

on this last point. A somewhat trustworthy tradition carries the labours of Christian teachers to introduce their religion