s of the Sea of Milk.[1098] It was inhabited by beings
white and shining like the moon who followed the rules of the
Pancaratra, took no food and were continually engaged in silent
prayer. So great was the effulgence that at first the visitors were
blinded. It was only after another century of penance that they began
to have hopes of beholding the deity. Then there suddenly arose a
great light. The inhabitants of the island ran towards it with joined
hands and, as if they were making an offering, cried, "Victory to
thee, O thou of the lotus eyes, reverence to thee, producer of all
things: reverence to thee, Hrishikesa, great Purusha, the
first-born." The three sages saw nothing but were conscious that a
wind laden with perfumes blew past them. They were convinced, however,
that the deity had appeared to his worshippers. A voice from heaven
told them that this was so and that no one without faith (abhakta)
could see Narayana.

A subsequent section of the same book tells us that Narada visited
Svetadvipa and received from Narayana the Pancaratra, which is
thus definitely associated with the locality.

Some writers have seen in this legend a poetical account of contact
with Christianity, but wrongly, as I think. We have here no mythicized
version of a real journey but a voyage of the imagination. The sea of
milk, the white land and its white shining inhabitants are an attempt
to express the pure radiance proper to the courts of God, much as the
Book of Revelation tells of a sea of glass, elders in white raiment
and a deity whose head and hair were white like wool and snow. Nor
need we suppose, as some have done, that the worship of the white
sages is an attempt to describe the Mass. The story does not say that
whenever the White Islanders held a religious service the deity
appeared, but that on a particular occasion when the deity appeared
they ran to meet him and saluted him with a hymn. The idea that prayer
and meditation are the sacrifice to be offered by perfected saints is
thoroughly Indian and ancient. The account testifies to the
non-Brahmanic character of this worship of Vishnu, which was
patronized by the Brahmans though not originated by them, but there is
nothing exotic in the hymn to Narayana and the epithet first-born
(purvaja), in which some have detected a Christian flavour, is as old
as the Rig Veda. The reason for laying the scene of the story in the
north (if indeed the points of the compass have any pl