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INTRODUCTION
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ultimately reach the Supreme Gol (viz. Viņņu), who pleased at their merits, has appointed them to function as His esteemed agents in the ritualistic worships. (vii) The charges levied by critics against Krsna's character as God are refuted. There could have been no immoral motive behind Krsna's sports with the Gopis in his borhood, and the Purāṇic stories relating those sports are found invariably to promote pious devotion and not immoral practices among people. Moreover, Kļņa nerer indulged in those sports after he was inVested with the sacred thread, whenceforth his entire activities were directed towards the propagation of Dharma alone. The statements in the Vişnupurāņa etc that Krsna was only a partial incarnation of Supreme God, etc. are not meant to be taken literally. (viii) The measurements of Akāša, Pșthyī, etc. recorded in the Purāņas are not to be taken in their literal sense. They only mean that the Creator of those huge substances who is the main theme of the Purāṇas is immeasurably huge. (ix) The caste-system laid down in the Sistras is not faulty or irrational. Persons, as a result of their good or evil deeds in the past lives, come, reasonably enough, to be born in their subsequent lives as Brīhmaņas. Ksatriyas. Vaisyas or Sūdras. (x) The nonVedic Smộtis have been purposely created by the Almighty to be imposed, by way of punishment, on per sons of base tastes and vile temperaments who are easily deluded into the snare. Pious and enligbtened minds, however, discard or evade them, atonce detecting the Almighty's motire bebind creating them.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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