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i88 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY slay; of dooms and destinies and strange heroic whispers from the twilight of the world.

But nowhere, it seems to me, does the enthusiasm of the story carry us so completely away as when we read at last of the ascension of Krishna into heaven. Here we are dealing with nothing pre-historic. Here we have the genius of a great Hindu poet in full flight. All that the ecclesiasticism of the West has done in fifteen centuries to place the like incident in the Christian story in an exquisite mystical light, half-veiled by its own glory, was here anticipated by some unnamed writer of the Gupta era in India, in or before the year a.d. 400, ending the story of the Incarnation on a note of mingled love and triumph :

"And He the Lord, passing through the midst of Heaven, ascended up into His own inconceivable region. Then did all the immortals join together to sing His praises. The gods and the rishis likewise offered salutation. And Indra also, the king of Heaven, hymned Him right joyfully."