often
philosophically incongruous and incoherent, its foundation was a true
religious feeling; it gave scope to the mystic raptures of the ascetic
and the simple righteousness of the laic; and it claimed for its
heroes, Vasudeva and his kindred and his friends the Pandava brethren,
a grave and dignified hero-worship. In short, it is a serious Indian
religion with an epic setting.

And now suddenly and most unexpectedly an utterly new spirit begins to
breathe in it. To the old teachings and legends are added new ones of
a wholly different cast. The old epic spirit of grave and manly
chivalry and godly wisdom is overshadowed by a new passion--adoration
of tender babyhood and wanton childhood, amorous ecstasies, a hectic
fire of erotic romance.

Of this new spirit there is no trace in the epic, except in one or two
late interpolations. But the Hari-vamsa, which was added as an
appendix to the Mahabharata not very long before the fourth century
A.D., is already instinct with it. It adds to the epic story of
Krishna a fluent verse account of his miraculous preservation from
Kamsa at his birth, his childhood among the herdsmen and herdswomen
of Vraja (the Doab near Mathura) with its marvellous freaks and
wonderful exploits, his amorous sports with the herdswomen, in fact
all the sensuous emotionalism on which the later church of Krishna has
ever since battened. About the same time appeared the Vishnu-purana,
which includes most of the same matter as the Hari-vamsa; and some
centuries later, probably about the tenth century, there was written a
still more remarkable book, the Bhagavata-purana, of which a great
part is taken up with the romance of Krishna's babyhood and childhood,
and especially his amorous sports. In the Bhagavata the later worship
of Krishna found its classic expression. In the Hari-vamsa and
Vishnu-purana religious emotion is still held under a certain
restraint; but in the Bhagavata it has broken loose and runs riot. It
is a romance of ecstatic love for Krishna, who is no longer, as in the
Vishnu-purana, the incarnation of a portion of the Supreme Vishnu, but
very God become man, wholly and utterly divine in his humanity. It
dwells in a rapture of tenderness upon the God-babe, and upon the
wanton play of the lovely child who is delightful in his naughtiness
and marvellous in his occasional displays of superhuman power; it
figures him as an ideal of boyish beauty, decked with jewels and
crested with peaco