ding to a general slaughter, of the hero slain by an arrow piercing his
one vulnerable spot, and of the great city engulfed by the sea, are
well-known in European epic literature, but do not occur elsewhere in that
of India and are not hinted at in the Vedas. The concept of the dying god,
so widespread in the ancient Near East, is found nowhere else in Indian
mythology.'

It is unfortunate that Krishna's reasons for destroying the Yadava race
are nowhere made very clear. The affront to the Brahmans is the immediate
occasion for the slaughter but hardly its actual cause; and, if it is
argued that the Yadavas must first be destroyed in order to render
Krishna's withdrawal from the world complete, we must then assume that the
Yadavas are in some mysterious way essential parts of Krishna himself.
Such a status, however, does not seem to be claimed for them and none of
the texts suggest that this is so. The slaughter, therefore, remains an
enigma.

Note 14, p. 68.

Wilson (op. cit., 608) summarizing the portents listed in the
_Mahabharata_ but not included in the _Vishnu_ or _Bhagavata Puranas_.

Note 15, p. 72.

From the _Brihadaranyaka_, quoted A. Danielou, 'An Approach to Hindu
Erotic Sculpture,' _Marg_, Vol. II, No. i, 88. For a Western expression of
this point of view, compare Eric Gill, 'Art and Love,' _Rupam_ (Calcutta,
1925), No. 21, 5.

'If the trees and rocks, the thunder and the sea, the frightful avidity of
animal life and the loveliness of flowers are so many hints of the God who
made them, how much more obviously are the things of humanity analogues of
the things of God? And among all such things, the union of man and woman
takes the highest place and is the most potent symbol. Therefore it is
that outside the commercial civilizations of the western world, love and
marriage take their place as types of divine union and everywhere love and
marriage are the subject matter, the theme of religious writers, singers,
painters and sculptors. It is true that love is the theme of western
writers also but with them the idea of love is entirely free from divine
signification. (As a corollary), the more the divine background
disappears, the more the prudishness of the police becomes the standard of
ethics and aesthetics alike. Under such an aegis the arts are necessarily
degraded to the level of the merely sentimental or the merely sensual and
while the sentimental is everywhere applauded, the sensual is a source