Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect c8.281

c8.281

In his *Early History of the Dekkan*,² Sir R. G. Bhandarkar points out that though a Mahā- bhārata existed before Pāṇini and Āśvalāyana, it is highly questionable whether our present text is the same as that which existed in their times. On the contrary, the probability is that the work has been added to from time to time; and the text itself has undergone such corruption that no one can be positively certain that a particular word was not foisted into it in comparatively modern times. Hopkins shows in his *Great Epic of India* that the "Pāṇḍu epic as we have it represents a period subsequent not only to Buddhism 500 B.C. but to the Greek invasion 300 B.C."'¹ Now, we know from the Besnagar Inscription that Vāsudeva who, judging from the context, was to Pāṇini only a Kshatriya worthy,² was in the second century B.C. recognised as "the God of gods." Is it, therefore, strange that the present *Mahābhārata* treats Kṛiṣhṇa as a divine teacher? It is perfectly intelligible that a work representing a period subsequent to 300 B.C.—a time when the apotheosis of Vāsudeva was an established fact—should reveal him as a god. It is equally obvious that such a work cannot be accepted as an authority for characterising as a piece of euhemerism the mention of Kṛiṣhṇa as a human pupil in a book which was composed before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C. In the *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka* ¹ Buddha is not merely deva; he is *devātideva*. Will any one contend on the strength of this statement that the mention of Buddha as a human teacher in the *Dhammacakkappavattanasutta* is a piece of euhemerism?