Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/234

 86 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY of Hellas, when he was worshipped by the common folk, had more in him of the Christ who saves, more of the Krishna, lover of man, than any of us now could easily imagine.

It may be that Krishna slaying the tyrant of Mathura forms but another echo of some immeasurably ancient tale, held by future nations in common, ere the Asian tablelands or the Arctic home had poured down new-born breeds of man on the coasts of Greece and river-banks of India. So at least must it have seemed to Megasthenes, making up his despatches for Seleukos Nikator. And 700 years go by, it appears, before a Gupta emperor, who has just annexed Western India with its capital of Ujjain, commissioned the editing anew of the national epic of the north, causing it to teach that this Cliso —Kriso—Krishna of the Jumna is no other than a certain Partha-Sarathi, known this long while to Northern and Vedic India as the exponent to his disciples of all the secrets of the Upanishads. Are we to take it that the Aryan teacher cries, "Whom ye ignorantly worship. Him declare I unto you" to the tribes whom he fain would Hinduise?

Readers of the Bhagavata Purana will note that the Jumna life, that is to say, the Heraklian element in the story of Krishna, is crowded into his first twelve years and that after this he is represented as being sent to learn the Vedas. That is to say, it is at this point that he is Hinduised as the Incarnation of Vishnu. Obviously, after this had