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14. THE CONCEPT OF AVATARS
The first of these aspects is clearly the oldest and it is here, if anywhere, that we may hope to find some fragments of history. But the embellishments of poets and story-tellers have been so many that we can only point to features which may indicate a substratum of fact. In the legend, Krishna assists the Pândavas against the Kauravas.
Now many think that the Pandavas represent a second and later immigration of Aryans into India, composed of tribes who had halted in the Himalayas and perhaps acquired some of the customs of the inhabitants, including polyandry, for the five Pândavas had one wife in common between them. Also, the meaning of the name Krishna, black, suggests that he was a chief of some non-Aryan tribe. It is, therefore, possible that one source of the Krishna myth is that a body of invading Aryans, described in the legend as the Pandavas, who had not exactly the same laws and beliefs as those already established in Hindustan, were aided by a powerful aboriginal chief, just as the Sisodias in Rajputana were aided by the Bhîls. It is possible too that Krishna's tribe may have come from Kabul or other mountainous districts of the north west, although one of the most definite points in the legend is his connection with the coast town of Dvâraka. The fortifications of this town and the fruitless efforts of the demon king, Salva, to conquer it by seige are described in the Mahâbhârata, but the narrative is surrounded by an atmosphere of magic and miracle rather than of history.
Though it would not be reasonable to pick out the less fantastic parts of the Krishna legend and interpret them as history, yet we may fairly attach significance to the fact that many episodes represent him as in conflict with Brahmanic institutions and hardly maintaining the position of Vishnu incarnate. Thus he plunders Indra's garden and defeats the gods who attempt to resist him. He fights with Śiva and Skanda. He burns Benares and all its inhabitants. Yet he is called Upendra, which, whatever other explanations sectarian ingenuity may invent, can hardly mean anything but the Lesser Indra, and he fills the humble post of Arjuna's charioteer. His kinsmen seem to have been of little repute, for part of his mission was to destroy his own clan and after presiding over its annihilation in internecine strife, he was slain himself.
In all this we see dimly the figure of some aboriginal hero who, though ultimately canonized, represented a force not in complete harmony with Brahmanic civilization.
The figure has also many solar attributes but these need not mean that its origin is to be sought in a sun myth, but rather that, as many early deities were forms of the sun, solar attributes came to be a natural part of divinity and were ascribed to the deified Krishna just as they were to the deified Buddha.
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