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Vişņu, Vasudeva and Kṛṣṇa
543
unauthorized surmise. It is very probable that Vasudeva was worshipped by the race of Yadavas as a tribal hero according to their own tribal rites and that he was believed to be an incarnation of Visņu, who was in his turn associated with the sun. Megasthenes, in his account of India as he saw it, speaks of the Sourasenoi --an Indian nation in whose land are two great cities, Methora and Kleisobora, through which flows the navigable river Jobaresas worshipping Heracles. "Methora" in all probability means Mathura and "Jobares " Jumna. It is probable that Heracles is Hari, which again is a name of Vasudeva. Again in the Mahābharata, vi. 65, Bhisma says that he was told by the ancient sages that formerly the great supreme person appeared before the assembly of gods and sages, and Brahma began to adore Him with folded hands. This great Being, who is there adored as Vasudeva, had first created out of Himself Samkarṣaṇa, and then Pradyumna, and from Pradyumna Aniruddha, and it was from Aniruddha that Brahma was created. This great Being, Vasudeva, incarnated Himself as the two sages, Nara and Nārāyaṇa. He Himself says in the Maha-bhārata, vi. 66, that "as Vasudeva I should be adored by all and no one should ignore me in my human body"; in both these chapters Kṛṣṇa and Vasudeva are identical, and in the Gitā Kṛṣṇa says that "of the Vṛṣṇis I am Vasudeva." It has also been pointed out that Vasudeva belonged to the Kanhāyana gotra. As Sir R. G. Bhandarkar says, "It is very probable that the identification of Kṛṣṇa with Vasudeva was due to the similarity of the gotra name with the name of Kṛṣṇa1." From the frequent allusions to Vasudeva in Patanjali's commentary and in the Maha-bhārata, where he is referred to as the supreme person, it is very reasonable to suppose that the word is a proper noun, as the name of a person worshipped as God, and not a mere patronymic name indicating an origin from a father Vasudeva. Kṛṣṇa, Janardana, Keśava, Hari, etc. are not Vṛṣṇi names, but were used as personal appellations of Vasudeva. Patañjali in his commentary on Panini, IV. 3. 98, notes that Vasudeva, as the name of a Kṣattriya king of the race of Vṛṣṇis, is to be distinguished from Vasudeva as the name of God. This God, worshipped by the Satvatas according to their family rites, probably came to be identified with a Vṛṣṇi king Vasudeva, and some of the personal characteristics of this king became also personal 1 Sir R. G. Bhandarkar's Vaisnavism and Saivism, pp. 11-12.
