In the following chapters I shall treat of this worship when describing the various sects which practise it.  A question of some importance for the history of Krishna’s deification is the meaning of the name Vasudeva.  One explanation makes it a patronymic, son of Vasudeva, and supposes that when this prince Vasudeva was deified his name, like Rama, was transferred to the deity.  The other regards Vasudeva as a name for the deity used by the Sattvata clan and supposes that when Krishna was deified this already well-known divine name was bestowed on him.  There is much to be said for this latter theory.  As we have seen the Jains give the title Vasudeva to a series of supermen, and a remarkable legend states[394] that a king called Paundraka who pretended to be a deity used the title Vasudeva and ordered Krishna to cease using it, for which impertinence he was slain.  This clearly implies that the title was something which could be detached from Krishna and not a mere patronymic.  Indian writings countenance both etymologies of the word.  As the name of the deity they derive it from vas to dwell, he in whom all things abide and who abides in all.[395]

5

Siva and Vishnu are not in their nature different from other Indian ideas, high or low.  They are the offspring of philosophic and poetic minds playing with a luxuriant popular mythology.  But even in the epics they have already become fixed points in a flux of changing fancies and serve as receptacles in which the most diverse notions are collected and stored.  Nearly all philosophy and superstition finds its place in Hinduism by being connected with one or both of them.  The two worships are not characteristic of different periods:  they coexist when they first become known to us as they do at the present day and in essential doctrines they are much alike.  We have no name for this curious double theism in which each party describes its own deity as the supreme god or All-god, yet without denying the god of the other.  Something similar might be produced in Christianity if different Churches were avowedly to worship different persons of the Trinity.

Siva and Vishnu are sometimes contrasted and occasionally their worshippers quarrel.[396] But the general inclination is rather to make the two figures approximate by bestowing the same attributes on both.  A deity must be able to satisfy emotional devotion:  hence the Tamil Sivaite says of Siva the destroyer, “one should worship in supreme love him who does kindness to the soul.”  But then the feature in the world which most impresses the Hindu is the constant change and destruction, and this must find a place in the All-god.  Hence the sportive kindly Krishna comes to be declared the destroyer of the worlds.[397] It is as if in some vast Dravidian temple one wandered through two corridors differently ornamented and assigned to the priests of different rites but both leading to the same image.  Hence it is not surprising