ON KRISHNA, AND SOLAR MYTHs. iD 
the southern aborigines. The eighth avatar is sometimes 
also a Rima, Bala-Rama, the strong Rama, or, as he is also 
called, Rama-Haliyudha, Rima with the plough. May this 
last not originally have been the great hero of agriculture and 
peace that followed the long days of war? In any case, 
Krishna follows him in birth, though in most legends he is 
placed alone as the eighth avatar of Vishnu. Is not this very 
suggestive of the comparatively late advent of Krishna on the 
tablets of Hindu mythology, though it is confessedly difficult, 
so far, to define chronologically the exact periods to which 
these legends refer? Krishna seems to have supplanted Bala- 
Rama as the eighth avatar. It is also significant, that the 
next avatar is Buddha, who must have received this rank long 
after the expulsion of Buddhism as a schism from India—a 
consummation which is generally placed at about the eighth 
century of the Christian era; and that the last avatar is yet 
to come—that of Kalki—who is to be the destroyer of the 
wicked, and the liberator of the world. Whence can this 
idea have arisen but in the wake of revelation ? 
The Cuairman (Mr. D. Howard, V.P.C.S.).—We have to thank Mr. 
Collins for a very interesting and valuable paper. The study of these 
ancient religions is undoubtedly one of great interest, and it is also 
one which now-a-days is being carried on with great vigour, although 
very often with a strange forgetfulness of elementary teachings as to 
the proper methods of investigation. You can only obtain sound in- 
ductions by duly ascertaining facts ; and yet there are many who write 
and speak as if the Light of Asia were the safest authority for the 
history of Buddha, or other equally untrustworthy guides were the best 
verification for the sun myths with which they deal. It isinvaluable when 
those who have opportunities of really studying the philosophy of different 
nations, whether in India or elsewhere, give us the benefit of their researches.* 
* BupDDHISM AND THE VepA.—Sir Monier Monier Williams, Boden Pro- 
fessor of Sanscrit in Oxford University, speaking lately at Oxford, urged 
that Christians had no reason to shrink from a comparison with other 
religious systems. He said :—‘To translate the Veda or the Koran into 
other languages the Hindoos and the Mohammedans consider simply dese- 
cration. Itis the sound and intonation of the Sacred Sanscrit and of the 
sacred Arabic, which is of primary importance and primary efficacy ; the 
sense is merely secondary. Millions and millions who know nothing of San- 
scrit are obliged to hear and repeat the Veda in Sanscrit, and millions whe 
are wholly ignorant of Arabic are obliged to hear and repeat the Koran in 
Arabic. Think of what would happen if no Christian in any part of the 
world were allowed to hear, read, or repeat his Bible except in Hebrew, or 
Greek!” Further, he found “no such revelation of our nature and needs in 
