Vaishnavism, Shaivism and Minor Religious Systems v2.c12.52

v2.c12.52

§ 7. It therefore appears that this religion of devotion to Vāsudeva ascends as high into antiquity as Pāṇini himself. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the Kṣatriyas engaged themselves in active speculations on religious matters about the time of the Upaniṣads¹ and are mentioned even as the original possessors of the new kowledge. Siddhārtha and Mahāvīra founded in this period of intellectual fermentation new systems of religion in the east or the Magadha country which discarded or passed over in silence the doctrine of the existence even of God and laid down self-abnegation and a course of strict moral conduct as the way to salvation. They belonged to the Śākya and Jñātṛka races of Kṣatriyas, and Buddhism and Jainism might be considered to be the religions of those tribes. The west, however, was not so radical in its speculations, and the race of Sātvatas developed a system of religion which took up the ideas of a Supreme God and devotion to him as the mode of salvation. These Sātvatas and the worship of Vāsudeva-Kṛṣṇa seem clearly to be alluded to by Megasthenes, who was the Macedonian ambassador at the court of Candragupta, the Maurya. Candragupta reigned in the last quarter of the fourth century B. C. The statement of Megasthenes is that Herakles was specially worshipped by the Sourasenoi, an Indian nation, in whose land are two great cities, Methora and Kleisobora, and through it flows the navigable river Jobares. The Sourasenoi were the Śūrasenas, a tribe of Kṣatriyas, who lived in the region in which was situated Mathurā, corresponding to Methora in the above passage, and in which flowed the river Jobares, which has been identified with the Jumna or Yamunā. If the Vāsudeva-Kṛṣṇa worship prevailed in the time of the first Maurya, it must have originated long before the establishment of the Maurya dynasty, and my assertion that it owes its origin to the stream of thought which began with the Upaniṣads and culminated in the east in Buddhism and Jainism, and arose about the time of the latter, is confirmed.