Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/26

 1 6 The Legends of Krishna.

did the Glastonbury thorn and the tooth-pick of the Indian Buddha.i

Another remarkable legend is that in which Krishna pro- tects the flocks from rain. The boy, we are told, denied the right of Indra to receive sacrifices, another instance of the conflict of rival cults. The rain-god in his wrath poured down an irresistible deluge, which would have destroyed the flocks had not Krishna raised the hill of Govardhana and shielded them by holding it up on his finger for seven days and nights.^ The suggestion of Professor Wilson ^ that the story is based on the domed cave or cavern temples in various parts of India hardly explains the matter. We have closer analogues in the Nepalese legends of the peak Tendong, w^hich miraculously elongated itself to save the refugees from the great flood, or the case of the Jaina Saint, Parsva-natha, over whom while engaged in his austerities his enemy, Kamatha, caused a mighty rain to fall, on which the Naga or serpent king, Dharmadhara, shaded him with his hood, a story localised at Ahichhatra in Rohilkhand.'* We may also compare the many tales of the raising of the sky from the earth, the heaven-pillars, as in the Atlas myth, and stories of the miraculous acts of gods or demons who drop mountains from their aprons as they flyover the earth. St. Anthony of Padua, we are told, w^as able to keep the rain off his congregation as they prayed in the open air ; and the same tale is told of many other saints.^

To quote Mr. Growse's summary of another curious legend : " But who so frolicsome as the boy Krishna. Seeing the fair maids of Braj performing their ablutions in the Jumna he stole along the bank, and picking up the

' Brand, Observatio7is, iii., 194.

- Growse, loc. ciL, 60; Wilson-Hall, loc. at., iv., 314 seqq.

^ Vishnu Piirdna, iv., 316.

359-
 * Waddell, Himalayas, no ; Cunningham, Ancient Geography of India, i.,

^ Compare the Australian legend, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vii. , 257.