become one with the universal spirit.  In another passage it is directly equated with sukham brahma in the same way (ib. 189. 17).  If now one turn to the employment of this word in the third book he will find the case to be the same.  When the king reproaches his queen for her atheistic opinions in iii. 31. 26 he says that if there were no reward for good deeds hereafter “people would not seek Nirv[=a]na,” just as he speaks of heaven (’immortality’) and hell, ib. 20 and 19, not meaning thereby extinction but absorption.  So after a description of that third heaven wherein is Vishnu, when one reads that Mudgala “attained that highest eternal bliss the sign of which is Nirv[=a]na” (iii. 261. 47), he can only suppose that the word means here absorption into brahma or union with Vishnu.  In fact Nirv[=a]na is already a word of which the sense has been subjected to attrition enough to make it synonymous with ‘bliss.’  Thus “the gods attained Nirv[=a]na by means of Vishnu’s greatness” (iii. 201. 22); and a thirsty man “after drinking water attained Nirv[=a]na,” i.e., the drink made him happy (ib. 126. 16).  One may best compare the Jain Nirv[=a]na of happiness.

While, therefore, Buddhism seems to have left many manifest traces[60] in the later epic the weight of its influence on the early epic may well be questioned.  The moral harangues of the earlier books show nothing more than is consistent with that Brahmanism which has made its way unaided through the greater humanitarianism of the earlier Upanishads.  At the same time it is right to say that since the poem is composed after Buddha’s time there is no historical certainty in regard to the inner connection of belief and morality (as expounded in the epic) with Buddhism.  Buddhism, though at a distance, environed epic Brahmanism, and may well have influenced it.  The objective proofs for or against this are not, however, decisive.

Whether Christianity has affected the epic is another question that can be answered (and then doubtfully) only by drawing a line between epic and pseudo-epic.  And in this regard the Harivanca legends of Krishna are to be grouped with the pseudo-epic, of which they are the legitimate if late continuation.  Again one must separate teaching from legend.  To the Divine Song belong sentiments and phrases that have been ascribed to Christian influence.  Definitive assurance in this regard is an impossibility.  When Vishnu says (as is said also in the Upanishads) “I am the letter A,” one may, and probably will, decide that this is or is not an imitation of “I am alpha,” strictly in accordance with his preconceived opinions.  There are absolutely no historical data to go upon.  One may say with tolerable certainty that the Divine Song as a whole is antique, prior to Christianity.  But it is as unmistakably interpolated and altered.  The doctrine of bhakti, faithful love as a means of salvation, cannot be much older than the Song,