nearer and more sympathetic led to the doctrine of Vishnu’s incarnations:  first grotesque deliverers in animal shapes, but at length the genial and sympathetic Krishna.  He was not the highest model of character, but he was human.  He had associated with the rustics and frolicked around their camp-fires.  He became Arjuna’s charioteer and rendered him counsel and help in that low disguise.  He was a sharer of burdens—­a counsellor and friend.  And he became the most popular of all Hindu deities.

The important point in all this is that this old system, so self-sufficient and self-satisfied, should have groped its way toward a divine sympathizer in human form, a living and helpful god among men.  Hinduism had not been wanting in anthropomorphisms:  it had imagined the presence of God in a thousand visible objects which rude men could appreciate.  Trees, apes, cattle, crocodiles, and serpents had been invested with an in-dwelling spirit, but it had found no mediator.  Men had been trying by all manner of devices to sublimate their souls, and climb Godward by their own self-mortification; but they had realized no divine help.  To meet this want they developed a veritable doctrine of faith.  They had learned from Buddhism the great influence and power of one who could instruct and counsel and encourage.  Some Oriental scholars think that they had also learned many things from Christian sources.[182]

However that may be—­from whatever source they had gained this suggestion—­they found it to accord with the deepest wants of the human heart.  And the splendid tribute which that peculiar development bears to the great fundamental principles of the Christian faith, is all the more striking for the fact that it grew up in spite of the adamantine convervatism of a system, all of whose teachings had been in a precisely opposite direction.  It was old Hinduism coming out of its intrenchments to pay honor to the true way of eternal life.  Probably the doctrine first sprang from a felt want, but was subsequently reinforced by Christian influences.

The late Professor Banergea, in his “Aryan Witness,” gives what must be regarded as at least a very plausible account of the last development of the so-called Krishna cult, and of this doctrine of faith.  He thinks that it borrowed very much from western monotheists.  He quotes a passage from the Narada Pancharata, which represents a pious Brahman of the eighth century A.D., as having been sent to the far northwest, where “white-faced monotheists” would teach him a pure faith in the Supreme Vishnu or Krishna.  He quotes also, from another and later authority, a dialogue in which this same Brahman reproved Vyasa for not having celebrated the praises of Krishna as supreme.  This Professor Banergea regarded as proof that previously to the eighth century Krishna has been worshipped only as a demigod.  But the whole drift of the old Brahmanical doctrines had been toward sacrifice as a debt and credit system, and that plan had failed.  It had impoverished the land and ruined the people, and had brought no spiritual comfort.  Men had found that they could not buy salvation.