usion" (_loc. cit._). This asseveration will have to be taken _cum
grano_. Had von Schroeder said 'pantheistic gods' he would have been
correct in this regard, but we think that both Vishnu and Civa were
great gods, equal, if not superior to Brahm[=a], when the epic proper
began. And, moreover, when one speaks of the original form of the poem
he cannot mean the pseudo-epic or the ancient legends which have been
woven into the epic, themselves of earlier date. No one means by the
'early epic' the tales of Agastya, of the creation of Death, of the
making of ambrosia, but the story of the war in its earliest shape;
for the epic poem must have begun with its own subject-matter. Now it
is not true that Brahm[=a] is regarded 'throughout' the early poem as
a chief god at all. If one investigate the cases where Vishnu or Civa
appears 'below' Brahm[=a] he will see, in almost every case that
Holtzmann has registered, that this condition of affairs is recorded
not in the epic proper but in the Brahmanic portions of the
pseudo-epic, or in ancient legends alone. Thus in the story of the
winning of ambrosia, of Agastya drinking ocean, and of R[=a]ma,
Brahm[=a] appears to be above Vishnu, and also in some extracts from
the pseudo-epic. For the real epic we know of but two cases that can
be put into this category, and neither is sufficient to support the
hypothesis built upon it.

For Krishna, when he ingeniously plots to have Bh[=i]ma slay
Jar[=a]sandha, is said to have renounced killing Jar[=a]sandha
himself, 'putting Brahm[=a]'s injunction before him' (ii. 22. 36),
_i.e._ recalling Brahm[=a]'s admonition that only Bh[=i]ima was fated
to slay the foe. And when Krishna and S[=a]tyaki salute Krishna's
elder brother they do so (for being an elder brother Baladeva is
Krishna's _Guru_) respectfully, 'just as Indra and Upendra salute
Brahm[=a] the lord of _devas_' (ix. 34. 18). Upendra is Indra's
younger brother, _i.e._, Vishnu (above). But these passages are scanty
proof for the statement that Brahm[=a] appears throughout the early
epic as the highest god;[30] nor is there even so much evidence as
this in the case of Civa. Here, too, it is in the tale of the churning
of ocean, of Sunda and Upasunda, of the creation of the death-power,
and in late didactic (Brahmanic) passages, where Brahm[=a] makes Civa
to destroy earth and Civa is born of Brahm[=a], and only in such
tales, or extracts from the Book of Peace, etc, that Brahm[=a] appears