Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/364

340 equality and unity of the three great rival gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, who were the chief gods favoured by each respectively. Devarâja of Vigajanagara erected the first temple to the Trimurti about this date. Ganesha, the god of wisdom and knowledge, appeared to his minister Laxmana and bid him build a temple on the banks of the Penar to the Hiranjagarbha, called Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva; this is the first example of any inscription of honour paid to the Trimurti.

Secondly, the worship of the god Crishna, whose name and attributes as well as his substitution for Vishnu, the second god of the Trimurti, present so many analogies with the teaching concerning our Divine Lord. Whatever difficulty there may be in fixing the date of the origin of the great Pânkarâtra sect, there appears none in affirming that the full development of its teaching in the direction of these analogies was subsequent to the establishment of Christianity. This is how A. Weber speaks of it. Brahmans, who had travelled to Alexandria, and perhaps Asia Minor, at a time when Christianity was in its first bloom, brought back its teaching respecting a Supreme God and a Christ whom they identified with and fastened upon their sage or hero, who had already in some measure received Divine honours—Crishna Devakiputra (Son of the divine woman). He also dwells on the influence exercised by the teaching of Christian missionaries. The importance given to Devaki would point to an incorporation of Christian teaching concerning the Virgin Mary. Weber, in a paper entitled "Einige Data auf das Geburtsfest Krishna's," instances many passages in the Bavrishjottara-Purana (one of the latest Puranas), which it is impossible to read without being reminded of the place of "the Virgin and Child" in Christian tradition, and which find no counterpart in earlier Indian writings. Similarly it was the later schools which dwelt on the fact of his having Nanda the herdsman for his father, seemingly suggested by our Lord's character of "the good Shepherd," because in the earlier Crishna