It cannot be imagined, however, that the cult of the Gangetic Krishna originated with that vague personage whose pupilage is described in the Upanishad.  But this account may still be connected with the epic Krishna.  The epic describes the overthrow of an old Brahmanic Aryan race at the hands of the P[=a]ndavas, an unknown folk, whose king’s polyandrous marriage (his wife is the spouse of his four brothers as well as of himself) is an historical trait, connecting the tribe closely with the polyandrous wild tribes located north of the Ganges.  This tribe attacked the stronghold of Brahmanism in the holy land about the present Delhi; and their patron god is the Gangetic Krishna.  In the course of the narrative a very few tales are told of Krishna’s early life, but the simple original view of Krishna is that he is a god, the son of Devak[=i].  The few other tales are late and adventitious additions, but this is a consistent trait.  Modern writers are fain to see in the antithesis presented by the god Krishna and by the human hero Krishna, late and early phases.  They forget that the lower side of Krishna is one especially Puranic.  In short, they read history backwards, for theirs is not the Indic way of dealing with gods.  In Krishna’s case the tricky, vulgar, human side is a later aspect, which comes to light most prominently in the Genealogy of Vishnu and in the Vishnu Pur[=a]na, modern works which in this regard contrast strongly with the older epic, where Krishna, however he tricks, is always first the god.  It is not till he becomes a very great, if not the greatest, god that tales about his youthful performances, when he condescended to be born in low life, begin to rise.  An exact parallel may be seen in the case of Civa, who at first is a divine character, assuming a more or less grotesque likeness to a man; but subsequently he becomes anthropomorphized, and is fitted out with a sheaf of legends which describe his earthly acts.[87] And so with Krishna.  As the chief god, identified with the All-god, he is later made the object of encomiums which degrade while they are meant to exalt him.  He becomes a cow-boy and acts like one, a god in a mask.  But in the epic he is the invading tribe’s chief god, in process of becoming identified with that god in the Brahmanic pantheon who most resembles him.  For this tribe, the (Yadavas) P[=a]ndavas, succeeded in overthrowing the Brahmanic stronghold and became absorbed into the Brahmanic circle.  Their god, who, like most of the supreme gods of this region among the wild tribes, was the tribal hero as sun-god, became recognized by the priests as one with Vishnu.  In the Upanishad the priest-philosopher identifies Krishna with the sun as the ’dark side’ (k[r.][s.][n.]a, ‘dark’) of Vishnu, the native name probably being near enough to the Sanskrit word to be represented by it.  The statement that this clan-god Krishna once learned the great truth that the sun is the All-god, at the mouth of a Brahman,