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It is further used to denote the Yadava race, and Krsna is often addressed as Varsneya, and in the Gita, x. 37, Krsna says, “‘Of the Vrsnis I am Vasudeva.” The Vrsnis are referred to in Kautilya’s Artha-sastra, where the group of Vrsnis (ursni-sangha) is said to have attacked Dvaipayana. The | Ghata-jataka also has the story of the curse of Kanha Dvai- payana as the cause of the destruction of the Vrsnis. But the Maha-bharata (xvi. 1) holds that the curse was pronounced by Vigvamitra, Kanva and Narada upon Samba, the son of Krsna. Two Vasudevas are mentioned in the Maha-bharata: Vasudeva, the king of the Paundras, and Vasudeva or Krsna, the brother of Samkar- sana, and both of them are mentioned as being present in the great assemblage of kings at the house of King Drupada for the marriage of Draupadi; it is the latter Vasudeva who is regarded as God. It is very probable that Vasudeva originally was a name of the sun and thus became associated with Visnu, who with his three steps traversed the heavens; and a similarity of Krsna or Vasudeva to the sun is actually suggested in the Mahda-bharata, XII. 341. 41, where Narayana says, ‘‘ Being like the sun, I cover the whole world with my rays, and I am also the sustainer of all beings and am hence called Vasudeva.” Again, the word Sdatvata also is used as a synonym of Vasudeva or Bhagavata. The word Satvata in the plural form is a name of a tribe of the Yadavas, and in the Maha-bharata, vit. 7662, the phrase Satvatam varah is used to denote Satyaki, a member of the . Yadava race, though this appellation is applied to Krsna in a 1 Yiithena vrsnir gati, Rg-Veda, i. 10. 2. 542 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. large number of places in the Maha-bharata*. In the later Bhaga- vata-purana (1X. g. 50) it is said that the Satvatas worship Brahman as Bhagavan and as Vasudeva. In the Maha-bharata, v1. 66. 41, Samkarsana is said to have introduced the satvata rites in wor- shipping Vasudeva. If Satvata was the name of a race, it is easy to imagine that the persons may have had special rites in worshipping Vasudeva. Yamunacarya, the great teacher of Ramanuja in the tenth century A.D., says that those who adore God (bhagavat), the supreme person, with purity (sattva), are called bhagavata and satvata?. Yamuna strongly urges that Satvatas are Brahmanas by caste, but are attached to Bhagavat as the supreme lord. Yamuna, however, seems to urge this in strong opposition to the current view that Satvatas were a low-caste people, who had not the initia- tion with the holy thread and were an outcast people originated from the Vaisyas*. The Satvatas are said to be the fifth low-caste people, who worship in the temples of Visnu by the orders of the king, and are also called Bhagavatas*. The Satvatas and Bhagavatas are those who make their living by worshipping images and are hence low and disreputable. Yamuna urges that this popular view about the Bhagavatas and the Satvatas is all incorrect; for, though there are many Satvatas who make a living by worshipping images, not all Satvatas and Bhagavatas do so; and there are many among them who worship Bhagavat, as the supreme person, solely by personal devotion and attachment. From Patafijali’s remarks in commenting on Panini, Iv. 3. 98, it is seen that he believed in the existence of two Vasudevas, one a leader of the Vrsni race and the other God. as Bhagavat. It has already been pointed out that the name Vasudeva occurs also in the Ghata-jataka. It may therefore be argued that the name Vasudeva was an old name, and the evidence of the passage of the Niddesa, as well as that of Patafijali, shows that it was a name of God or Bhagavat. The later explanation of Vasudeva as ‘“‘the son of Vasudeva” may therefore be regarded as an 1 Mahd-bharata, v. 2581, 3041, 3334, 3360, 4370; IX. 2532, 3502; x. 726; XII. 1502, 1614, 7533. 2 tatas ca sattvdd bhagavan bhajyate yaih parah puman te satvata bhagavatd ity ucyante dvijottamaih. Yamuna’s Agama-pramanya, p. 7. 6. 3 Thus Manu (x. 23) says: vaisyat tu jayate vratyat sudhanvacarya eva ca kGriisas ca vijanma ca maitras satvata eva ca. pancamah satvato nama Visnor ayatanam hi sah <*> = pijayed ajnaya rajnam sa tu bhagavatah smrtah. Ibid. p. 8. XIV] Visnu, Vasudeva and Krsna 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 Visnu, who was in his turn associated with the sun. Megas- thenes, 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 Jobares— as 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 Maha- bharata, v1. 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 Samkarsana, 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 Narayana. He Himself says in the Mahda-bharata, 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 Krsna and Vasudeva are identical, and in the Gita Krsna says that “of the Vrsnis I am Vasudeva.” It has also been pointed out that Vasudeva belonged to the Kanhayana gotra. As Sir R. G. Bhandarkar says, “It is very prob- able that the identification of Krsna with Vasudeva was due to the similarity of the gotra name with the name of Krsna!.”’ From the frequent allusions to Vasudeva in Patafijali’s commentary and in the Maha-bharata, 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. Krsna, Janardana, Kesava, Hari, etc. are not Vrsni names, but were used as personal appellations of Vasudeva. Patafijali in his commentary on Panini, Iv. 3. 98, notes that Vasudeva, as the name of a Ksattriya king of the race of Vrsnis, is to be distinguished from Vasudeva as the name of God. This God, wor- shipped by the Satvatas according to their family rites, probably came to be identified with a Vrsni 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. 544 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. characteristics of the god Vasudeva. The word Krsna occurs several times in the older literature. Thus Krsna appears as a Vedic rsi, as the composer of Rg-Veda, vul. 74. In the Mahda-bharata Anukramani Krsna is said to have descended from Angiras. Krsna appears in the Chandogya Upanisad (111. 17) as the son of Devaki, as in the Ghata-jataka. It is therefore probable that Vasudeva came to be identified with Krsna, the son of Devaki. The older conception of Krgna’s being a rtvij is found in the Maha-bharata, and Bhisma in the Sabha-parva speaks of him as being a rtvij and well-versed in the accessory literature of the Vedas (vedanga). It is very probable, as Dr Ray Chaudhury points out, that Krsna, the son of Devaki, was the same as Vasudeva, the founder of the Bhagavata system; for he is referred to in the Ghata-jataka as being Kanhayana, or Kanha, which is the same as Krsna, and as Devaki-putra, and in the Chdndogya Upanisad, 111. 17. 6, also he is referred to as being Devaki-putra. In the Ghata-jataka Krsna is spoken of as being a warrior, whereas in the Chandogya Upanisad he is a pupil of Ghora Angirasa, who taught him a symbolic sacrifice, in which penances (tapas), gifts (dana), sincerity (arjava), non-injury (ahimsa) and truthfulness (satya-vacana) may be regarded as sacrificial fees (daksina). The Maha-bharata, 11. 317, describes Krsna both as a sage who performed long courses of asceticism in Gandhamadana, Puskara and Badari, and as a great warrior. He is also described in the Maha-bharata as Vasudeva, Devaki-putra and as the chief of the Satvatas, and his divinity is everywhere acknowledged there.. But it is not possible to assert definitely that Vasudeva, Krsna the warrior and Krsna the sage were not three different persons, who in the Maha-bharata were unified and identified, though it is quite probable that all the different strands of legends refer to one identical person. If the three Krsnas refer to one individual Krsna, he must have lived long before Buddha, as he is alluded to in the Chandogya, and his guru Ghora Angirasa is also alluded to in the Kausitaki- brahmana, xxx. 6 and the Kathaka-samhita, 1. 1, which are pre- Buddhistic works. Jaina tradition refers to Krsna as being anterior to Parsvanatha (817 B.c.), and on this evidence Dr Ray Chaudhury thinks that he must have lived long before the closing years of the ninth century B.c.! 1 Early History of the Vaisnava Sect, p. 39. XIV] Bhagavata and the Bhagavad-gita 545 Bhagavata and the Bhagavad-gita. The Maha-bharata (x11. 348) associates the Bhagavad-gita with the doctrines of the Ekanti-Vaisnavas. It is said there that the God Hari (bhagavan Hari) always blesses those that are devoted to God without any idea of gain (ekdntin) and accepts their adorations, offered in accordance with proper rites (vidhi-prayukta)!.