common in Central Asia, but I do not know of any evidence
for cattle-worship in those regions. Clemens of Alexandria,[386]
writing at the end of the second century A.D., tells us that the
Indians worshipped Herakles and Pan. The pastoral Krishna has
considerable resemblance to Pan or a Faun, but no representations of
such beings are recorded from Graeco-Indian sculptures. Several Bacchic
groups have however been discovered in Gandhara and also at
Muttra[387] and Megasthenes recognized Dionysus in some Indian deity.
Though the Bacchic revels and mysteries do not explain the pastoral
element in the Krishna legend, they offer a parallel to some of its
other features, such as the dancing and the crowd of women, and I am
inclined to think that such Greek ideas may have germinated and proved
fruitful in Muttra. The Greek king Menander is said to have occupied
the city (c. 155 B.C.), and the sculptures found there indicate that
Greek artistic forms were used to express Indian ideas. There may have
been a similar fusion in religion.

In any case, Buddhism was predominant in Muttra for several centuries.
It no doubt forbade the animal sacrifices of the Brahmans and favoured
milder rites. It may even offer some explanation for the frivolous
character of much in the Krishna legend.[388] Most Brahmanic
deities, extraordinary as their conduct often is, are serious and
imposing. But Buddhism claimed for itself the serious side of religion
and while it tolerated local godlings treated them as fairies or
elves. It was perhaps while Krishna was a humble rustic deity of
this sort, with no claim to represent the Almighty, that there first
gathered round him the cycle of light love-stories which has clung to
him ever since. In the hands of the Brahmans his worship has undergone
the strangest variations which touch the highest and lowest planes of
Hinduism, but the Muttra legend still retains its special note of
pastoral romance, and exhibits Krishna in two principal characters,
as the divine child and as the divine lover. The mysteries of birth
and of sexual union are congenial topics to Hindu theology, but in
the cult of Muttra we are not concerned with reproduction as a world
force, but simply with childhood and love as emotional manifestations
of the deity. The same ideas occur in Christianity, and even in the
Gospels Christ is compared to a bridegroom, but the Krishna legend
is far more gross and naive.

The infant Krishna is commonl