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ON KRISHNA, AND SOLAR MYTHS. 167 
must yield. This method of treatment might suit the third 
century after Christ, or even the tenth, as well as the age of 
the Upanishads. 
12. Again, Mr. Telang seeks to prove that there are quota- 
tions in the Vedinta-Sitras from the Gita’, and that the 
Vedanta-Siitras are older than Panini, the great grammarian, 
whom he places in the fourth century B.c. But both the fact of 
quotation and the dates are so involved in difficulties that I 
believe they are all very debatable, and I believe Professor 
Max Miiller would place the Vedanta-Stitras after the third 
century 4.D. He says: “The philosophical Sitras were, and 
are still, supposed by many scholars to belong to the centuries 
preceding ourera. All 1 can say is, I know, as yet, of no 
sound arguments, still less of any facts, in support of such 
assertions.” (India, p. 352.) 
13. While we acknowledge, therefore, the extreme difficulty 
of fixing historical dates to many of the Hindu books, it must 
be allowed, I think, that there is no valid reason forthcoming 
at present for placing the Bhagavad-Gité before the com- 
mencement of the Christian era. 
14. While, however, we cannot at present fix the exact date 
of the Gita, there are many bits of circumstantial evidence 
which seem to point to the conclusion that the story of 
Krishna in the poem was written after the beginning of the 
Christian era, and by one who had received some knowledge 
of the incarnation and teaching of Jesus Christ. 
15. In this connexion it may be observed that the worship 
of Vishnu as the supreme god would seem to belong only to 
quite the latter phase of Hinduism. The Aryans first wor- 
shipped the sun; next Indra, the god of rain, becomes the 
chief deity adored—the natural result, as Mr. Talboys 
Wheeler well suggests, of life in a tropical climate, where the 
rain is even more precious than the sun. When the worship 
of Vishnu as the supreme spirit really superseded that of 
Indra we cannot definitely say, but it seems to belong to the 
more metaphysical age of Hindu thought, and is not fully 
developed till we come to the period of the Puranas. It is 
only in the accounts of Krishna that are found in these 
writings—as in the Bhagavata-Purana—that he is described 
as taking part in the overthrow of Indra. In the Bhagavad- 
Gité he is once or twice addressed as Vishnu. ‘The doctrine 
of the avatdras, or incarnations, of Vishnu are also only 
first developed in the Puranas. Thus the legends of the 
Fish, the Tortoise, and the Boar are found in the Satapatha 
Brahmana ; but it is only in the—much later—Puranas that 
they are described as incarnations of Vishnu. 
