anas and perhaps that it
is later than the Puranas. But it has inspired a large literature,
more truly popular than anything that the Puranas contain. Thus we
have the Sanskrit Ramayana itself, the Hindi Ramayana, the Tamil
Ramayana of Kamban, and works like the Adhyatma-Ramayana and
Yoga-Vasishtha-Ramayana.[365] Of all these, the Ramayana of Tulsi
Das is specially remarkable and I shall speak of it later at some
length.

4

Krishna, the other great incarnation of Vishnu, is one of the most
conspicuous figures in the Indian pantheon, but his historical origin
remains obscure. The word which means black or dark blue occurs in the
Rig Veda as the name of an otherwise unknown person. In the Chandogya
Upanishad,[366] Krishna, the son of Devaki, is mentioned as having
been instructed by the sage Ghora of the Angirasa clan, and it is
probably implied that Krishna too belonged to that clan.[367] Later
sectarian writers never quote this verse, but their silence may be due
to the fact that the Upanishad does not refer to Krishna as if he
were a deity, and merely says that he received from Ghora instruction
after which he never thirsted again. The purport of it was that the
sacrifice may be performed without rites, the various parts being
typified by ordinary human actions, such as hunger, eating, laughter,
liberality, righteousness, etc. This doctrine has some resemblance to
Buddhist language[368] and if this Krishna is really the ancient
hero out of whom the later deity was evolved, there may be an allusion
to some simple form of worship which rejected ceremonial and was
practised by the tribes to whom Krishna belonged. I shall recur to
the question of these tribes and the Bhagavata sect below, but in this
section I am concerned with the personality of Krishna.

Vasudeva is a well-known name of Krishna and a sutra of
Panini,[369] especially if taken in conjunction with the comment of
Patanjali, appears to assert that it is not a clan name but the name
of a god. If so Vasudeva must have been recognized as a god in the
fourth century B.C. He is mentioned in inscriptions which appear to
date from about the second century B.C.[370] and in the last book of
the Taittiriya Aranyaka,[371] which however is a later addition of
uncertain date.

The name Krishna occurs in Buddhist writings in the form Kanha,
phonetically equivalent to Krishna. In the Digha Nikaya[372] we hear
of the clan of the Kanhayanas (= Karshnayanas) and o