Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/17

Rh like Siva in his form as Pasupa or Pasupati, " the lord of kine," especially of those set apart for sacrifice.

We may even go further and suggest a conflict of rival agricultural cults. Krishna elopes with Rukmini, " the golden," the betrothed of Sisupala, whom he encounters and decapitates with his discus. Now Sisupala means "cherisher of the young," in particular of young animals, the equivalent of the Greek Kourotrophos, the guardian deity of the springs near which the hair of youths and maidens was dedicated. In this view he too would be another rural deity of the same kind.

Like that of so many gods, the birth of Krishna was in wondrous wise. A supernatural voice, what the Greeks would have called a Pheme, announced to the usurper Kamsa that his slayer would be born in the eighth son of his kins- man Vasudeva and Devaki, niece of the deposed monarch Ugrasena. To defeat the prophecy, Kamsa summoned the pair to Mathura and kept them in ward. Each of their children as it was born was destroyed. But when Devaki became pregnant for the seventh time the embryo was miraculously transferred to the womb of Rohini, " the red cow," the second wife of Vasudeva, and it was reported that Devaki had miscarried. In due time the fated child was born and was named Sankarshana, "he that was taken from the womb of his mother," and later on Balarama, or Bala- deva, who aided his brother Krishna in overthrowing the tyrant. With this we may compare the many folktales which tell of the birth of the fateful child, and it is needless to suggest the obvious analogy to the tale of Herod.

We have, again, here an instance of the common case of a duality of gods — the Asvins, the Dioscuri, Yama and Yami, Romulus and Remus, Epimetheus and Prometheus, indicating either syncretism, the combination of rival cults,