Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/250

20 2 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY Brahma the Creator, the benevolent four-headed Grandsire. Who was this Brahma? What is his exact significance? It might almost be stated as a law that in India there has never been a deity or a religious idea without some social formation behind it. What traces have we, then, of a Brahma-worshipping sect? At what period, and where, are we to look for it? Is there any connection between him and the story of Dattatreya ? What is the history of his one temple and one image near Pushkar at Ajmir? Already, in the Mahabharata, He seems to be half-forgotten; yet if that work had been produced in the present age he would have received less mention still.

An important date to settle is that of Kalidas. If Chandragupta II of Pataliputra (A.D. 375 to 413) be really the famous Vikramaditya of Ujjain, it is difficult to see how Kalidas can have been one of the jewels of hi's court. Hinduism would seem first to have formulated the idea of Shiva, then that of Vishnu (as Lakshmi-Narayana), next that of Rama, and lastly that of Krishna. Between the theological conception of Lakshmi-Narayana and the concreted conception of Rama, Kalidas appears to have lived. His imagination was greatly touched by the conception of the Trinity, which must have been newly completed in his time. Personally he was overshadowed by the idea of Shiva, and he was not without foresight of the deification of Rama. Hindu scholars should be able from these considerations to fix his date.