is also hardly Puranic and it knows nothing of the legends about the pastoral Krishna.  It presupposes the Sankhya and Yoga, though in what stage of development it is hard to say, and in many respects its style resembles the later Upanishads.  I should suppose that it assumed its present form about the time of the Christian era, rather before than after, and I do not think it owes anything to direct Christian influence.  In its original form it may have been considerably older.

The Bhagavad-gita identifies Krishna with Vasudeva and with Vishnu but does not mention Narayana and from its general style I should imagine the Narayaniya to be a later poem.  If so, the evolution of Bhagavata theology will be that Krishna, a great hero in a tribe lying outside the sphere of Brahmanism, is first identified with Vasudeva, the god of that tribe, and then both of them with Vishnu.  At this stage the Bhagavad-gita was composed.  A later current of speculation added Narayana to the already complex figure, and a still later one, not accepted by all sects, brought the pastoral and amorous legends of Krishna.  Thus the history of the Bhagavatas illustrates the Indian disposition to combine gods and to see in each of them only an aspect of the one.  But until a later period the types of divinity known as Vishnu and Siva resisted combination.  The worshippers of Siva have in all periods shown less inclination than the Vishnuites to form distinct and separate bodies and the earliest Sivaite sect of which we know anything, the Pasupatas,[493] arose slightly later than the Bhagavatas.

5

Patanjali the grammarian (c. 150 B.C.) mentions devotees of Siva[494] and also images of Siva and Skanda.  There is thus no reason to doubt that worshippers of Siva were recognized as a sect from at least 200 B.C. onwards.  Further it seems probable that the founder or an early teacher of the sect was an ascetic called Lakulin or Lakulisa, the club-bearer.  The Vayu Purana[495] makes Siva say that he will enter an unowned corpse and become incarnate in this form at Kayarohana, which has been identified with Karvan in Baroda.  Now the Vayu is believed to be the oldest of the Puranas, and it is probable that this Lakulin whom it mentions lived before rather than after our era and was especially connected with the Pasupata sect.  This word is derived from Pasupati, the Lord of cattle, an old title of Rudra afterwards explained to mean the Lord of human souls.  In the Santiparvan[496] five systems of knowledge are mentioned.  Sankhya, Yoga, the Vedas, Pasupatam and Pancaratram, promulgated respectively by Kapila, Hiranyagarbha, Apantaratamas, Siva the Lord of spirits and son of Brahma, and “The Lord (Bhagavan) himself.”  The author of these verses, who evidently supported the Pancaratra, considered that these five names represented the chief existing or permissible varieties of religious thought.  The omission of the Vedanta is remarkable but perhaps