In any case, Buddhism was predominant in Muttra for several centuries.  It no doubt forbade the animal sacrifices of the Brahmans and favoured milder rites.  It may even offer some explanation for the frivolous character of much in the Krishna legend.[388] Most Brahmanic deities, extraordinary as their conduct often is, are serious and imposing.  But Buddhism claimed for itself the serious side of religion and while it tolerated local godlings treated them as fairies or elves.  It was perhaps while Krishna was a humble rustic deity of this sort, with no claim to represent the Almighty, that there first gathered round him the cycle of light love-stories which has clung to him ever since.  In the hands of the Brahmans his worship has undergone the strangest variations which touch the highest and lowest planes of Hinduism, but the Muttra legend still retains its special note of pastoral romance, and exhibits Krishna in two principal characters, as the divine child and as the divine lover.  The mysteries of birth and of sexual union are congenial topics to Hindu theology, but in the cult of Muttra we are not concerned with reproduction as a world force, but simply with childhood and love as emotional manifestations of the deity.  The same ideas occur in Christianity, and even in the Gospels Christ is compared to a bridegroom, but the Krishna legend is far more gross and naive.

The infant Krishna is commonly adored in the form known as Makhan Chor or the Butter Thief.[389] This represents him as a crawling child holding out one hand full of curds or butter which he has stolen.  We speak of idolizing a child, and when Hindu women worship this image they are unconsciously generalizing the process and worshipping childhood, its wayward pranks as well as its loveable simplicity, and though it is hard for a man to think of the freaks of the butter thief as a manifestation of divinity, yet clearly there is an analogy between these childish escapades and the caprices of mature deities, which are respectfully described as mysteries.  If one admits the worship of the Bambino, it is not unreasonable to include in it admiration of his rogueries, and the tender playfulness which is permitted to enter into this cult appeals profoundly to Indian women.  Images of the Makhan Chor are sold by thousands in the streets of Muttra.

Even more popular is the image known as Kanhaya, which represents the god as a young man playing the flute as he stands in a careless attitude, which has something of Hellenic grace.  Krishna in this form is the beloved of the Gopis, or milk-maids, of the land of Braj, and the spouse of Radha, though she had no monopoly of him.  The stories of his frolics with these damsels and the rites instituted in memory thereof have brought his worship into merited discredit.  Krishnaism offers the most extensive manifestation to be found in the world of what W. James calls the theopathic condition as illustrated by nuns like Marguerite