ON KRISHNA, AND SOLAR MYTHS. 191 
is an Improvement upon earlier Hinduism seems to be allowed on all 
hands. Its approach to some of the central thoughts of Christianity 
is emphatically noted by Sir Monier Williams. Must not this 
change of religious thought and practice which is at the root of 
Vaishnavism have come from without ? This will be found to be 
always the case in great religious changes ; just as Rammohun Roy 
and Keshub Chander Sen were indebted for their innovations to 
Western lore. I cannot believe that, as one of my critics seems to 
suggest, God was “witnessing” to India by revelations to the 
writer of the Bhagavad-Giti of some wonderful but disjointed 
truths, to be put into the mouth of the Krishna of the Mahabharata. 
But I can believe that some echoes of the Christian story, such as 
recommended themselves to the mind of the Brahman teacher of the 
period, should find their way into the religious mind of India. I 
know of no really valid reason against the Bhagavad-Gita having 
been written long after the third century, though I know that this 
is not the popular view of the case. And with regard to the 
probable early influence of Christianity in India, it is a subject that 
has received too little attention, especially in the matter of search 
for remains, because it has not been believed. There is no evidence 
that Pantenus visited only the west coast of India, where the 
Syrian Christians remain to-day. There is the Christian cross, with 
Pahlavi inscription, like those on the western coast, at St. Thomas, 
near Madras, indicating an early Christian settlement on the 
eastern coast also. Some of the first Roman Catholic missionaries 
describe other Christian crosses, though unknown at the present 
time, probably destroyed. Early Christian crosses have also been 
found in the Nizam’s territory. That there is no body of Christians 
there now is not in evidence. It has been the same in China, In 
Shensi, in China, there is the now well-known stone with Christian 
inscription, but no vestige of Christianity around. It is said to 
have been erected in 781 A.p.,—that is the date, according to 
Chinese chronology, on the stone itself,—and it records an Imperial 
proclamation in 638 A.p. authorising the dissemination , of 
Christianity through the Empire. It is a fair inference that this 
Imperial edict was not issued in the very infancy of Christian 
preaching in China. The Persian and Syrian Christians were 
early about in the world. At the Council of Nicaea, a.p. 325, a 
Bishop signed himself “ Metropolitan of Persia and the Great 
India.” Here, again, it has been doubted whether “ India” may 
not have meant Arabia, or any portion of, or the whole of the East ; 
but Megasthenes, 600 years before, must have known that the 
world would understand him when he named his book Indica. 
