Almost all that we have of legend comes to us from our Aryan forefathers
sometimes scarcely changed, sometimes so altered that the links between the
old and new have to be puzzled out ; but all these myths and traditions, when
we come to know the meaning of them, take us back to the time when the Aryans
dwelt together in the high lands of Central Asia ; and they all mean the same
things that is, the relation between the Sun and the earth, the succession of
day and night, of summer and winter, of storm and calm, of cloud and tempest,
of golden sunshine and bright blue sky.
A few of the Aryan nations have preserved in their ancient poetry some remnants
of the natural awe with which the earlier dwellers on the earth saw the
brilliant sun "slowly rise from out the darkness of the night, raising itself
by its own might higher and higher, till it stood triumphant on the arch of
heaven, and then descended and sank down in its fiery glory, into the dark
abyss of the heaving and hissing sea." One of these nations is the Hindoo. In
the hymns of the Veda the poet still wonders whether the Sun will rise again ;
and asks how he can climb the vault of heaven, why he does not fall back, why
there is no dust on his path.
It is to these Vedic hymns written, it is said, from one thousand to fifteen
hundred years before the Christian era that we must go for the development
which changes the Sun from a mere luminary into a Creator, Preserver, Ruler,
and Rewarder of the world in fact, into a Divine or Supreme Being. These
hymns contain the germ-story of the Virginborn God and Saviour, the great
benefactor of mankind, who is finally put to death, and rises again to life
and immortality on the third day.
In the Sanskrit Dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we find
a full account of the incarnate deity Vishnu, who appeared in human form as
Crishna. Vishnu, being moved to relieve the earth of her load of misery and
sin, came down from heaven, and was born of the virgin Devaki, on the twenty-
fifth of December. (See Note i.)
His birth was announced in the heavens by his star, and a chorus of Devatas
celebrated, with song, the praise of Devaki. " The spirits and nymphs of heaven
danced and sang; and at midnight, when the Support of All was born, the clouds
emitted low, pleasing sounds, and poured down rain of flowers."
Though of royal descent (he was of the Yadava line, the oldest and noblest of
India) he was born in a cave, his mother being on a journey with his foster-
father, on their way to the city, to pay his yearly tribute or tax to the king.
At Crishna's birth the cave was brilliantly illuminated, and the faces of his
father and mother emitted rays of glory.
The divine child was recognized by cowherds, who prostrated themselves before
him. He was received with divine honors, and presented with gifts of sandal-
wood and perfumes. Soon after his birth he was visited by the holy prophet
Nared, who had heard of the fame of the infant. Nared examined the stars, and
declared Crishna to be of celestial descent.
Crishna's foster-father was warned by a heavenly voice to fly with the child to
Gokul, across the River Jumna, as the reigning monarch, Kansa, sought his life.
When the River Jumna was reached, the waters respectfully retired on each side,
to make way for the transportation of the child. On the most ancient Hindoo
temples are sculptured representations of the flight at midnight, with the
infant saviour Crishna.
In order to destroy Crishna, Kansa ordered the massacre of all the male infants
born in his realm during the night on which Crishna was born. The story of the
slaughtered infants is the subject of an immense sculpture in the cave-temple
of Elephanta. The flat roof of this cavern-temple, and every other circumstance
connected with it, proves that its origin must be referred to a very remote
epoch, hundreds of years before our era.
Crishna was preceded by Rama, who was born a short time before his birth and
whose life was also sought by Kansa.
It is said that Crishna astonished his teachers by his precocious wisdom.
Various miracles are related as occurring in his childhood, some of them being
similar to those related of the childhood of Jesus Christ in the Apocryphal New
Testament.
One of Crishna's first miracles, in his maturity, was the healing of a leper.
He restored the maimed, the deaf, and the blind; he healed the sick and raised
the dead ; he supported the weak against the strong, and the oppressed against
the powerful. The Hindoo sacred books teem with accounts of the miracles he
performed. The people crowded his path and adored him as a god.
He had twelve favorite disciples who accompanied him on his missionary travels.
At one time a poor lame woman came with a vessel filled with spices, sweet-
scented oils, sandalwood, saffron, civet, and other perfumes, and, making a
sign on Crishna's forehead, poured the contents of the vessel upon his head.
He was in constant strife with the Evil One in the early part of his ministry ;
but he overcame the Tempter, and is represented as bruising the head of the
serpent and standing upon him.
" He was the meekest and best-tempered of beings." " He preached very nobly and
sublimely. He was pure and chaste in reality ; and, as a lesson of humility,
he even condescended to wash the feet of the Brahmans."
Crishna had a beloved disciple, Arjuna, before whom he was transfigured, and to
whom he said : " Whate'er thou dost perform, whate'er thou eatest, whate'er
thou givest to the poor, whate'er thou offerest in sacrifice, whate'er thou
doest as an act of holy presence, do all as if to me, O Arjuna. I am the great
Sage, without beginning; I am the Ruler and the All-sustainer."
Again he said : " Then be not sorrowful ; from all thy sins I will deliver
thee. Think thou on me, have faith in me, adore and worship me, and join
thyself in meditation to me ; thus shalt thou come to me, O Arjuna ; thus shalt
thou rise to my supreme abode, where neither sun nor moon hath need to
shine, for know that all the lustre they possess is mine." " I am the cause of
the whole universe ; through me it is created and dissolved ; on me all things
within it hang and suspend, like pearls upon a string." *' I am the light in
the sun and moon, far, far beyond the darkness. I am the brilliancy in flame,
the radiance in all that's radiant, and the light of Rghts." "I am the
sustainer of the world, its friend and Lord ; I am its way and refuge." " I am
the Goodness of the good ; I am Beginning, Middle, End, Eternal Time, the
Birth, the Death of All."
Crishna was crucified, and is represented with arms extended, hanging on a
cross, the nail-prints being visible in hands and feet, and with the spear
wound in his side. One account speaks of him as having been shot in the foot
with an arrow, by a hunter, who afterwards says to him : " Have pity upon me,
who am consumed by my crime, for thou art able to consume me." Crishna replies
: " Fear not thou in the least. Go, hunter, through my favor, to heaven, the
abode of the gods."
Crishna descended into Hell. In three days he rose from the dead and ascended
bodily into heaven. All men saw him, and exclaimed, " Lo ! Crishna's soul
ascends his native skies ! "
At his death there came calamities and omens of every kind. A black circle
surrounded the moon, the sun was darkened at noonday ; the sky rained fire and
ashes ; flames burned dusky and livid ; demons committed depredations on earth
; at sunrise and sunset thousands of figures were seen skirmishing in the sky,
and spirits were observed on all sides.
Crishna was the second person in the Hindoo Trinity, "the very supreme Brahma;
though it be a mystery how the Supreme should assume the form of man."
Vishnu is to come again on earth, in the latter days, and will appear as an
armed warrior, riding a winged white horse. At his approach the sun and moon
will be darkened, the earth will tremble, and the stars fall from the
firmament. He is to be Judge of the dead, at the last day.
Devaki, the virgin mother of Crishna, was also called Aditi, which, in the Rig
Veda, is the name for the Dawn. Thus the legend is explained. Devaki is Aditi ;
Aditi is the Dawn ; the Dawn is the Virgin Mother ; and the Saviour of mankind,
who is born of Aditi, is the Sun. Indra, worshipped in some parts of India as a
crucified god, is represented in the Vedic hymns as the son of Dahana, who is
Daphne, a personification of the dawn.
As the Sun and all the solar deities rise in the east, it is no cause of wonder
that Aditi, the Dawn, came to be called the Mother of the Bright Gods, the
Virgin Mother who gave Birth to the Sun, the Mother with Powerful, Terrible,
with Royal Sons.
Statues of Crishna are to be found in the very oldest cave-temples throughout
India, and it has been proved satisfactorily, on the authority of a passage of
Arrian, that the worship of Crishna was practised in the time of Alexander the
Great, in a temple which still remains one of the jnost famous in India, that
of Mathura, on the Jumna River.
Crishna was deified about the fourth century B. C, but the general outline of
his history began, we are told, with the time of Homer, nine-hundred years B.
C, or more than a hundred years before Isaiah is said to have lived and
prophesied. From the date of the second century before our era, the story of
Crishna was the subject of dramatic representations similar to those connected
with the festivals held in honor of Bacchus.
The myths which crystallized around the name of Crishna are found in the very
earliest Vedic literature, associated with other gods. Indeed, the Hindoos have
had twenty-four Avatars, or Divine Incarnations. " Every time," as Vishnu is
represented as saying in the Bhagavad Gita (the Song of the Most High), "that
religion is in danger and that iniquity triumphs, I issue forth for the defence
of the good and the suppression of the wicked ; for the establishment of
justice I manifest myself from age to age." The incarnation of Vishnu is not a
transitory manifestation of the deity, but the presence, at once mystic and
real, of the Supreme Being in a human individual, who is both truly God and
truly man ; and this intimate union of the two natures is conceived of as
surviving the death of the individual in whom it was realized. Crishna had the
titles of Saviour, Redeemer, Preserver, Comforter, and Mediator. He was
called the Resurrection and the Life, the Lord of Lords, the Great God, the
Holy One, the Good Shepherd.
The Evil One, the Serpent, or Satan, who figures so conspicuously in the sun-
myths, is simply the dark and stormy cloud the enemy of the Sun person
ified, the Hindoo Rakshasas of our Aryan ancestors. The cloudy shape has
assumed a thousand different forms, horrible or grotesque and ludicrous, to
suit the changing fancies of the ages. ¦ The god of one nation became the devil
of another.
The word devil^ when traced to its primitive source, is found to be a name of
the Supreme Being. The Aryan Bhaga (Persian, Baga), who is described in a
commentary of the RigVeda as the Lord of Life, the Giver of Bread, and the
Bringer of Happiness, has become the Bogie, or Bug-a-boo, or Bugbear, of
nursery lore. The same name which suggests the supreme majesty of deity, to the
Vedic poet, to the Persian of the time of Xerxes, and to the modern Russian, is
in English associated with an ugly and ludicrous fiend.
The Hindoos held that there is a subtile, invisible body within the material
body. They represent the constitution of man as consisting of three principles
: the soul, the invisible body, and the material body. The invisible body they
call the ghost or shade, and consider it as the material portion of the soul.
It appears that thinking men, while as yet on a low level of culture, were
deeply impressed by two groups of biological problems. In the first place :
What is it that makes the difference between a living and a dead person? What
causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, death ? In the second place : What are
those human shapes which appear in dreams and visions ? " Looking at the two
groups of phenomena, the ancient savage philosophers," says Edward Burnett
Tylor, "practically made each help to account for the other, by combining both
in a conception which we may call an apparitional-soul, a ghost-soul." To the
savage, dreams possess a reality which a civilized man can scarcely appre
ciate. During sleep the spirit seems to desert the body ; and as in dreams
other localities and even other worlds appear to be visited, a part of the
person seems to the savage to possess a separate existence. The savage believes
the events in his dreams to be as real as those of his waking hours, and hence
he naturally feels that he has a spirit which can quit the body.
