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OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
the Aryan tribes dwelling there. Its essential features were belief in a single personal God, Vasudeva, and in salvation as resulting from an unswerving devotion to him. Briefly we may say that it resembles the Hebraic type of godhead which we found in Varuna (p. 34) in the Ṛgveda. In fact the influence of Christianity has been traced in it by some like Weber, the German orientalist; but, since the existence of the creed long before the Christian era is indubitable, the theory has not commended itself to scholars in general." Later, as it so often happens, the hero who preached this creed was himself deified and identified with the Supreme. In Sri Kṛṣṇa's time, the designation of the supreme God was probably 'Bhagavat'3 or 'the worshipful,' whence the name Bhagavata or 'worshipper of Bhagavat.' The name 'Bhagavadgita' ('Lord's song') given to the well-known work, which appears as an inset in the epic, suggests that when it was composed Śrī Kṛṣṇa had come to be worshipped as the Supreme. This religion in still later times was amalgamated with the theistic teaching of the Madhya-deśa, probably as a set-off against the secessions that were gaining strength in the East; and then Śrī Kṛṣṇa was identified with VisnuNārāyaṇa, who had by that time come to be looked upon there as the Highest. In this final form the doctrine is very elaborately treated of in the sections of the Mahabharata known as the Nārāyaṇīyas; but it there indicates a development which almost certainly is in advance of the period with which we are now concerned. An earlier phase of the same is seen in the Bhagavadgītā where, for instance, the identification of Śrī Kṛṣṇa with Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa does not yet appear.5 It may be assigned to the period under consideration
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I 'The worship of Krishna seems to have been popular during the first centuries of the development of the Jaina creed'-Prof. Jacobi: SBE. vol. XXII. p. xxxi. n.
See e.g. Prof. Winternitz: History of Indian Literature (Eng. Tr.), vol. i. p. 431 n.
3 It could not, however, have been the exclusive title of this god, since it is used of Siva in Svetasvatara Up. (iii. 11). Compare also the term siva-bhāgavata used in the Mahabhaṣya under V. ii. 76. 4 xii. 334-51.
5 Cf. Bhandarkar: op. cit. p. 13.
