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12. VAISHNAVISM
Another cult, which flourished with the decline of Vedism, was centered on Krishna, the deified tribal hero and religious leader of the Yadavas.
The Vrsnis and Yadavas came closer together, resulting in the merging of Vasudeva and Krishna. This was as early as the fourth century BCE according to evidence in Megasthenes and in the Arthasastra of Kautilya.
Vasudeva-Krishna liberates the throne of Mathura from his evil kinsman Kamsa, travels to the city of Dvaraka on the Arabian Sea to establish a dynasty, and in the Mahabharata he counsels his cousins the Pandavas in their battle with the Kauravas. This then took sectarian form as the Pancaratra or Bhagavata religion.
A tribe of ksatriyas, warriors, called the Satvata, were bhagavatas and were seen by the Greek writer Megasthenes at the end of the fourth century BCE. This sect then combined with the cult of Narayana, a demiurge god-creator who later became one of the names of Vishnu.
Soon after the start of the Common Era, the Abhiras or cowherds of a foreign tribe, contributed Gopala Krishna, the young Krishna, who was adopted by the Abhiras, worked as a cowherd, and flirted with the cowherdesses. Only as a mature young man, did he return to Mathura and slay Kamsa.
The Vasudeva, Krishna, and Gopala cults became integrated through new legends into Greater Krishnaism, the second and most outstanding phase of Vaishnavism.
Being non-Vedic, Krishnaism then started to affiliate with Vedism so that the orthodox would find it acceptable. Vishnu of the Rg Veda was assimilated into Krishnaism and became the supreme God who incarnates whenever necessary to save the world. Krishna became one of the avataras of Vishnu.
In the eighth century, CE the Bhakthi of Vaishnavism came into contact with Shankara's Advaita doctrine of spiritual monism and world-illusion. This philosophy was considered destructive of Bhakthi and important opposition in South India came from Ramanuja in the eleventh century and Madhva in the fifteenth century. Ramanuja stressed Vishnu as Narayana and built on the Bhakthi tradition of the Alvars, poet-saints of South India from the sixth to the ninth centuries (see Shri Vaishnavas).
In North India, there were new Vaishnava movements:
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