nation must be fixed and the purpose sincere.32 There must be absolute devotion to the intuitive faculty and unfailing loyalty to nature. "Without sincerity there can be nothing."33

FREDERICK G. HENKE. WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY, Salem, OregoN.

"Ibid., Book 1, p. 56f.

Doctrine of the Mean, Chap. 25, § 2.

CHRISTIAN ELEMENTS IN LATER KRISHNAISM

AND IN OTHER HINDUISTIC SECTS.*

WE

KRISHNA AND CHRIST.

E are treading on solid ground when, in the question of Christian contributions, we turn to that particular phase of Krishnaism which we meet in the literature of the Purânas, of works similar to the Purânas and of writings intrinsically connected with the Purânas.

Of all Indian religions Krishnaism (as Hopkins correctly observes)' was by its nature most easily accessible to Christian influences. Buddhism, at least in its original form, was a religion which recognized neither God nor soul; Shivaism places greatest weight upon rites and selfmortification, whereas Krishnaism in its popular form is a religion of joy; it rejects bloody sacrifice and preaches love. To these fundamental features of Indian religions which Hopkins has emphasized, we might add that Jainism also, which is so closely allied to Buddhism and which has continued in India to the present day, possesses no similarity to Christianity in its religious character. On the other hand there exists between Christianity and Krishnaism an intrinsic relationship which explains the susceptibility of the latter to Christian influences. To this intrinsic

* Authorized translation from the German manuscript by Lydia G. Robinson. In the bibliographical references the following abbreviations will be observed: ERE, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics; IA, Indian Antiquary; JAOS, Journal of the American Oriental Society; JRAS, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

1 India Old and New, 162.

relationship may be added an external reason to which attention has often been called, namely, that the similarity of the names Christ and Krishna, which is often in evidence to-day in the religious conversations and writings of Indians, has certainly facilitated the adoption of Christian features. In some localities of India the word Krishna is pronounced Krishta."

THE GOD'S BIRTHDAY.

I shall begin with an element of the worship which in all probability is the oldest Christian possession in Krishnaism and moreover renders it possible to recognize Christian influence with such distinctness that it supplies an appropriate basis for the investigation of the other effects of Christianity upon Hinduism. This element is the celebration of Krishna's birthday concerning which we have the learned and circumstantial-I might say the too detailed-treatise of A. Weber,3 the main results of which are unassailable, although in some particulars it is not quite correct.

We have seen above that the conception of Krishna as a divine child which has contributed so much to the spread of Krishnaism all over India is autochthonous. The celebration of Krishna's birthday, however, is an imitation of the Christian festival. Weber' describes twelve texts, which he dated from the thirteenth century on, in which the Janmastami (Krishna's birthday), or a variant of it bearing the name Jayantî, is treated in more or less detail; 'Grierson, JRAS, 1907, 316.

8

On the Krishnajanmashtami (Krishnas Geburtsfest) in the Abhandlungen der K. Akademie der Wiss. zu Berlin, 1867, 217ff. The earlier literature on the question of the connection between Christian and Krishnaistic legends which has been so much discussed since the middle of the eighteenth century is mentioned on pages 3-10ff. Cf. also Hopkins, Religions of India, 430ff.; India Old and New, 162ff.

"See "Christian Elements in the Mahâbhârata," The Monist, July, 1913, pp. 343ff.

'Op. cit., 218ff.

and adds, what is more important historically, a list of the Purânas which mention the festival and of the Purâna passages quoted. From this we learn that almost all the Purânas contain such mention' and that most of all the Bhavishya and Bhavishyottara-Purâna come into consideration, according to which Krishna himself is said to have established the festival as soon as he had slain Kamsa, and indeed in the midst of universal jubilation for all castes, even for the Shûdras."

When from the quotations out of the Purânas, Weber1o explains the Krishna festival to be positively authenticated for about the eleventh century, this late date rests upon the low estimate of the age of the Purânas which was generally prevalent among Sanskritists at the time when Weber's treatise appeared (1867) and still later. Nevertheless Weber at once adds this sentence: "The unanimity of so many works of this kind in the meantime may lead us considerably farther upwards, since such a universal recognition of the festival indeed demands the conclusion that at the time of their composition it was generally accepted, whereupon eo ipso, the farther assumption naturally follows that its adoption or introduction goes back to a still earlier time." This "earlier time" he seeks to determine more exactly by succeeding passages, always under the spell of his conviction that Christian influences had penetrated to India from Alexandria in Egypt."

Ibid., 221ff., especially 239. The quotations from the Smriti are rather unimportant since these versified texts are "modern compilations of secondary significance" in spite of the ancient names Parâshara, Paithinasi, Bhrigu, Vasishtha, Vishnu, Vyâsa. See Jolly, Recht und Sitte, 24.

Strangely enough not the Bhagavata-Purâna in spite of its sectarian Krishna character which is especially distinct in the tenth book. To be sure it describes in detail the time of Krishna's birth (10, 3, 1-8) but says nothing of the festival. This must certainly have a definite reason which according to Weber (page 241) may be sought in the fact that "in the Bhâg. Pur. we have the modern interpretation of the worship of Krishna which is occupied mainly with the love affairs of Krishna and in which the mother of God withdraws more and more into the background."

Weber starts from the fact that Christ's birthday has been celebrated in the Christian church since the middle of the fourth century and that in Alexandria a festival of the birth of Christ existed in connection with that of his baptism on January 6, which "was supplanted shortly before the year 431 by an independent and exclusive celebration of the Christmas festival on December 25." Now because the naming of Krishna forms an integral part of the celebration of his birth, it seems to Weber extremely obvious that the Hindus adopted the festival in the period "during which that peculiarly Egyptian custom, to celebrate the birth of Christ at the same time as his baptism on January 6, prevailed, i. e., in the time between the second half of the fourth century and the year 431 when the celebration of the birth alone on December 25 replaced it."

It is clear that this conjecture of Weber's and the reason for it stand upon a weak foundation. But J. Kennedy is mistaken when he says13 that "Weber's chief arguments are drawn from the history of the legends regarding the Virgin and the representations of the Madonna lactans; on this basis he assigns the period 350-431 A. D. as the period to which the rise of the Krishna festival must be assigned," and when he opposes this alleged proof of Weber's with the words: "The legends of the Madonna were not known in Egypt until towards the close of the fifth century, and were probably derived from Italy," etc. Weber's main arguments for assigning the date 350 to 431 are in no wise founded upon the legends of the Madonna and her earliest representations with the Christ-child; he expressly characterizes these legends and pictures11 as only a part of the material to be taken into consideration for the whole of the investigation; instead he has based the date 350-431 solely upon the reasons I have just cited. Hence Kennedy has here been guilty of hastiness.

13

1a Kr. Geburtsfest, 337. 1 JRAS, 1907, 483. 14 Kr. Geburtsfest, 336.