Studies in the Epics and Puranas c12.2

c12.2

The Kṛṣṇa problem is one of the most interesting, important, fascinating and elusive topics in the domain of Indian Literature and History, and there is hardly an orientalist of note who has not contributed something on the subject. To an orthodox Hindu, Kṛṣṇa is a reality, and His mere name has been the saviour of innumerable distressed souls during the last two thousand years. An ordinary Hindu is never concerned with the historicity of Kṛṣṇa: to investigate the problem is a sacrilege according to him. It was only during the last century when the Western canons of criticism were applied to the problem that scholars doubted the historicity of Kṛṣṇa and maintained that Kṛṣṇa represented a syncretism of more than one person, and a steady influx of papers and monographs began to gather round the problem. It is indeed curious that the same set of facts has led to such diverse conclusions.