Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/25

 The Legends of Krishna. 15

the demon-whirlwind is represented by a pair of enormous wings overshadowing the divine child, the same motif which is illustrated on the temple of Apollo at Delos, where Boreas bears away Oreithyia.'

Another interesting myth is connected with the rescue of the child by his father Vasu-deva. When he was forced to fly from the tyrant Kamsa, he took Krishna in his arms and plunged with him into the waters of the Jumna, then swollen by the autumn rains. At his first step the water reached the child sleeping in his arms, but as he advanced the wave could rise no higher, and they both crossed in safety. The miracle is commemorated by a brass toy, known as " the Vasu-deva Katora," or the bowl of Vasu-deva, a brass cup enclosing the figure of a man so contrived that when water is poured into it, it cannot rise above the child's foot, being drained away by a hidden duct at the bottom.^ This same oriental myth is told of the youth Zardusht, who passes over the waste of waters so that the soles of the feet of him and his companions were only moistened.^ It is thus the eastern version of the tale of St. Christopher, of which there are many representations in the windows of our English churches. Later on the tale was allegorised to represent the Saviour bearing the sins of the world, while in Finnish tradition the saint has been identified with the ofolden river kins:, who is invoked to send a host of otters into the net of the hunter.* Folklore, in fact, has been busy with this saint, much of whose cult is obviously connected with some primitive worship of a water spirit. Thus, as he waded in the sea, he left his mark on the Dory fish ; when he struck his staff into the earth it bloomed and budded, as

' Growse, loc. cii., 55 ; Miss Harrison, Myths and Monmiients of Athens, Intro., Ixvii.

" Growse, loc. cit., 54.

^ Shea-Troy er, Dabistan, i., 230.

•• 1st Series Notes and Queries, v., 372 seqq., 495 ; Abercromby, Prehistoric Finns, \., 339 ; Gloucestershire Folklore, 46 seqq.