Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect c8.306

c8.306

We have seen that the arguments of scholars who hold that Kṛṣṇa Devakīputra was originally a deity do not bear scrutiny. We have also seen that there can be no reasonable objection to his identity with Kṛṣṇa Devakīputra mentioned in one of the oldest Upanishads. The pre-epical literature of the Hindus knows a human Kṛṣṇa but is silent about a deity Kṛṣṇa. Buddhist and Jaina traditions clearly refer to Vāsudeva as a human hero. Even the Mahābhārata preserves traces of the original human character of Kṛṣṇa. The conclusion, therefore, is irresistible that he was a real man. The divine nature of Kṛṣṇa known throughout the greater part of the epic belonging in its present form to a period subsequent to the rule of the Scythians, Greeks, and Bactrians¹ would certainly not appear strange to those who will notice the appearance of Buddha among a crowd of heterogeneous deities in the monuments of the Indo-Scythian period.² In the case of Kapila we find another instance of a human teacher being raised to the dignity of a divine being in the epic.³