Page:Hindu Gods and Heroes.djvu/94

92 describes dramatic and mimetic performances representing the killing of Kaṃsa by Vāsudēva. Altogether his references show that the legend and worship of Vāsudēva bulked largely in the popular mind at this time in India north of the Vindhya mountains. Vāsudēva was adored as the great teacher and hero-king, in whom the gods Vishṇu and Nārāyaṇa were incarnated; and he was associated with two great cycles of legend, the one that related his birth at Mathurā, his victory over the tyrant Kaṃsa, his establishment of the colony at Dvārakā, and his adventures until his death and translation to heaven, and the other telling of his share in the Great War as ally of the five Pāṇḍava brethren. Both cycles represented him as supported by princely heroes. The Mathurā-Dvārakā legend gave him his brother Bala-bhadra or Saṃkarshaṇa, his son Pradyumna, and his grandson Aniruddha, whom theologians about the beginning of the Christian era fitted into their philosophical schemes by representing them as successive emanations from him; and the Mahābhārata furnished him with the Pāṇḍavas, whose heroic tale soon created for them a worship everywhere. As we have seen, there were adorers of Arjuna already in the fifth century B.C.; and in the first century B.C. there seems to be evidence for a worship of all the five together with Vāsudēva, for an inscription has been found at Mora which apparently mentions