in India.  In the ancient Soma sacrifices the officiants drank the residue of the sacred drink:  in modern temples, where ample meals are set before the god more than once a day, it is the custom, perhaps because it is more advantageous, to sell them to the devout.  From this point of view the prasad is by no means the equivalent of the Lord’s Supper, but rather of the things offered to idols which many early Christians scrupled to eat.  It has, however, another and special significance due to the regulations imposed by caste.  As a rule a Hindu of respectable social status cannot eat with his inferiors without incurring defilement.  But in many temples members of all castes can eat the prasad together as a sign that before the deity all his worshippers are equal.  From this point of view the prasad is really analogous to the communion inasmuch as it is the sign of religious community, but it is clearly distinct in origin and though the sacred food may be eaten with great reverence, we are not told that it is associated with the ideas of commemoration, sacrifice or transubstantiation which cling to the Christian sacrament.[1091]

The most curious coincidences between Indian and Christian legend are afforded by the stories and representations of the birth and infancy of Krishna.  These have been elaborately discussed by Weber in a well-known monograph.[1092] Krishna is represented with his mother, much as the infant Christ with the Madonna; he is born in a stable,[1093] and other well-known incidents such as the appearance of a star are reproduced.  Two things strike us in these resemblances.  Firstly, they are not found in the usual literary version of the Indian legend,[1094] and it is therefore probable that they represent an independent and borrowed story:  secondly, they are almost entirely concerned with the mythological aspects of Christianity.  Many Christians would admit that the adoration of the Virgin and Child is unscriptural and borrowed from the worship of pagan goddesses who were represented as holding their divine offspring in their arms.  If this is admitted, it is possible that Devaki and her son may be a replica not of the Madonna but of a pagan prototype.  But there is no difficulty in admitting that Christian legends and Christian art may have entered northern India from Bactria and Persia, and have found a home in Muttra.  Only it does not follow from this that any penetrating influence transformed Hindu thought and is responsible for Krishna’s divinity, for the idea of bhakti, or for the theology of the Bhagavad-gita.  The borrowed features in the Krishna story are superficial and also late.  They do not occur in the Mahabharata and the earliest authority cited by Weber is Hemadri, a writer of the thirteenth century.  Allowing that what he describes may have existed several centuries before his own date, we have still no ground for tracing the main ideas of Vaishnavism to Christianity and the later vagaries of Krishnaism are precisely the aspects of Indian religion which most outrage Christian sentiment.