intrusion” (loc. cit.).  This asseveration will have to be taken cum grano.  Had von Schroeder said ‘pantheistic gods’ he would have been correct in this regard, but we think that both Vishnu and Civa were great gods, equal, if not superior to Brahm[=a], when the epic proper began.  And, moreover, when one speaks of the original form of the poem he cannot mean the pseudo-epic or the ancient legends which have been woven into the epic, themselves of earlier date.  No one means by the ‘early epic’ the tales of Agastya, of the creation of Death, of the making of ambrosia, but the story of the war in its earliest shape; for the epic poem must have begun with its own subject-matter.  Now it is not true that Brahm[=a] is regarded ‘throughout’ the early poem as a chief god at all.  If one investigate the cases where Vishnu or Civa appears ‘below’ Brahm[=a] he will see, in almost every case that Holtzmann has registered, that this condition of affairs is recorded not in the epic proper but in the Brahmanic portions of the pseudo-epic, or in ancient legends alone.  Thus in the story of the winning of ambrosia, of Agastya drinking ocean, and of R[=a]ma, Brahm[=a] appears to be above Vishnu, and also in some extracts from the pseudo-epic.  For the real epic we know of but two cases that can be put into this category, and neither is sufficient to support the hypothesis built upon it.

For Krishna, when he ingeniously plots to have Bh[=i]ma slay Jar[=a]sandha, is said to have renounced killing Jar[=a]sandha himself, ‘putting Brahm[=a]’s injunction before him’ (ii. 22. 36), i.e. recalling Brahm[=a]’s admonition that only Bh[=i]ima was fated to slay the foe.  And when Krishna and S[=a]tyaki salute Krishna’s elder brother they do so (for being an elder brother Baladeva is Krishna’s Guru) respectfully, ’just as Indra and Upendra salute Brahm[=a] the lord of devas’ (ix. 34. 18).  Upendra is Indra’s younger brother, i.e., Vishnu (above).  But these passages are scanty proof for the statement that Brahm[=a] appears throughout the early epic as the highest god;[30] nor is there even so much evidence as this in the case of Civa.  Here, too, it is in the tale of the churning of ocean, of Sunda and Upasunda, of the creation of the death-power, and in late didactic (Brahmanic) passages, where Brahm[=a] makes Civa to destroy earth and Civa is born of Brahm[=a], and only in such tales, or extracts from the Book of Peace, etc, that Brahm[=a] appears as superior.  In all other cases, in the real action of the epic, he is subordinate to Vishnu and Civa whenever he is compared with them.  When he is not compared he appears, of course, as the great old Father-god who creates and foresees, but even here he is not untouched by passion, he is not all-knowing, and his role as Creator is one that, with the allotment of duties among the gods, does not make him the highest god.  All the old gods are great till greater appear on the scene.  There is scarcely a supreme Brahm[=a] in the epic itself, but there is a great Brahm[=a], and a greater (older) than the sectarian gods in the old Brahmanic legends, while the old Brahmanhood reasserts itself sporadically in the C[=a]nti, etc, and tells how the sectarian gods became supreme, how they quarrelled and laid the strife.