Vaishnavism, Shaivism and Minor Religious Systems v1.c4.s8.4

v1.c4.s8.4

§ 36. Still many parts of the Mahābhārata represent a condition of things in which the divinity of Vāsudeva-Kṛṣṇa was not generally acknowledged. In the above passage from the Anugītā, the sage Uttaṅka is about to pronounce a curse on Kṛṣṇa, as if he was an ordinary individual, and desists only when his universal form is shown to him. Similarly in many passages noticed by Dr. Muir (O. S. T. IV, pp. 205ff.) Kṛṣṇa's divinity is denied; and Saṃjaya and Bhīṣma make strenuous efforts to establish it. What appears to be the fact is that the religion of Vāsudeva, in which divine honours were paid to him, was professed by the Sātvatas, as observed in several of the passages noticed above, and its gradual extension to other tribes and people of the country is shadowed forth in these portions of the great epic. In the Purāṇic times, however, the cult of Vāsudeva ceased to be militant, and three streams of religious thought, namely the one flowing from Viṣṇu, the Vedic god at its source, another from Nārāyaṇa, the cosmic and philosophic god, and the third from Vāsudeva, the historical god, mingled together decisively and thus formed the later Vaiṣṇavism. There is, however, a fourth stream, which in modern times in some of the systems of Vaiṣṇavism has acquired an almost exclusive predominance, and to this we shall now direct our attention.