1832.] Analysis of the Puranas. 219 



own spirit ; who is void of desire, who assumes forms at will, who annihi- 

 lates the five desires, and who is the cause of desire ; who is all things, 

 the lord of all things, and the unsurpassed form, which is the seed of 

 all things ; who is embodied in the Vedas, who is the seed of them, the 

 fruit of ihe Vedas, and its bestower ; who is learned in the Vedas, the 

 ritual they enjoin, and the best of all who are conversant with their 

 doctrines." 



Siva's address. 



" I adore him, the invincible, the giver, the lord and cause of 

 victory, the best of the bestowers of victory, and victory itself ; who 

 is the lord and cause of all things, lord of the lord of all things, and 

 cause of the cause of all things ; who is present in all, who upholds all, 

 who destroys all, generates all, who is the cause of the preservation of 

 all, who is all things ; who is the fruit, the giver of the fruit, its seed, 

 and its support ; who is identical with light, the irradiator of all, and 

 supreme of all those who shine with divine radiance," 



Brahma's address. 



tt I adore Krishna, who is free from the three qualities, the one im- 

 perishable Govinda, who is invisible and void of form, who is visible 

 and assumed the shape of a cowherd, who seems a youth in years, who 

 is of mild deportment, the beloved of the Gopis, of lovely aspect, black 

 as a new cloud, and beautiful as a myriad of Kanderpas. Inhabiting 

 the place of the Rasa in his sojourn in the groves of Vrindavan^ the 

 lord of the mystic dance, and its performer, and the delighter in 

 the graces of its evolutions." 



The other divinities continue in the same strain, and the tendency 

 of the hymns furnishes a key to the whole work, the object of which 

 is to identify the cowherd of Vrindavan, with the supreme cause of 

 the world, or to claim for Krishna a rank which the followers of 

 Vishnu and Siva demand, exclusively, for the object of their respec- 

 tive adoration : with much more reason it must be confessed ; for 

 the actions of Krishna are even stili more preposterously incompatible 

 with a divine character than those of his competitors for pre-eminence. 



After the several deities are produced from various parts of 

 Krishna's person, he retires into the Rdsamandala, a chamber or 

 stage fcr the performance of a kind of dance, to which the followers of 

 this divinity attach much importance, although it seems to be no 

 more than a kind of dramatic representation of Krishna's dancing 

 and sporting with the Gopis. There, Radha, his favourite mistress, 

 proceeds from his heart ; from the pores of her skin spring three 

 hundred millions of Gopis y or nymphs of Vrindavan; and an equal 



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