Functions of the Gods. 69 



his son should leave him and the heavenly life, and 

 although he finally consented that he should be 

 born as Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna, it was only 

 on the condition that he should live but for sixteen 

 years, and be killed in the great battle of Kuruk- 

 shetra. You say, what a strange view of life ! 

 What an extraordinary condition for love to make, 

 that this youth should die at the age of sixteen, in 

 the very flower of his dawning manhood, should die 

 a death of violence. Yet that was the will of the 

 one who loved him best, for heaven sees with differ- 

 ent eyes from earth. Soma saw the life, and cared 

 not for the form ; to a God the form is a prison, 

 death is the gaoler that liberates ; hence the con- 

 dition was made that only for sixteen years might 

 the divine youth live a human life, and then " my 

 son of mighty arms shall come back to me," and that 

 from a battle field, dying gloriously in the midst of 

 the fight. 



Do you know that sometimes the swamping of 

 a civilisation by a natural convulsion such as the 

 going down of Atlantis below the waves of the 

 ocean that we now call the Atlantic, the wiping out 

 of the whole nation or race is the best proof of 

 love that the Supreme Ishvara through His inter- 

 mediate agents can show to the lives therein em- 

 bodied. For there are stages in the world's story 



