ORIENTAL SERIES.

KRISHNA. 161
ranced far beyond their early settlements in the north-west. He
appears prominently in the Maha-bharata, where his character
is invested with a certain degree of mysticism. Additions and
interpolations have raised him to divinity, and it is in the
character of the " Divine One " that he delivered the celebrated
song, Bhagavad-gita, a production of comparatively late date,
now held to be pare of the great epic. In this work he dis-
tinctly declares himself to be the Supreme Being. He says :
" All this universe has been created by me ; all things exist in
me;" and Arjuna addresses him as " the supreme universal
spirit, the supreme dwelling, the eternal person, divine, prior
to the gods, unborn, omnipresent." The divine character of
Krishna having thus been established,
it was still further deve-
loped in the Hari-vansa, a later addition to the Maha-bharata ;
and in the Puranas, especially in the Bhagavata Puram, it
attained full expansion. There the story of the life of Krishna,
from his earliest days, is related with minute details, and it is
upon this portion of his life that the popular mind delights
to dwell. The mischievous pranks of the child, the follies of
the boy, and the amours of the youth, are the subjects of
boundless wonder and delight. All these stories, as told in the
Bhagavata Purana, have been made accessible and popular by
the Hindi translation known by the name Prem Sagar, (
ocean
of love/ and by other versions. Much of the story of the early
days of Knshfia is thus of comparatively modern invention,
while the incidents of his relations with the Pam?ava princes are
among the most ancient.
Knahwa was of the Yadava race, being descended from Yadu,
one of the sons of Yayati. The Yadavas of old were a pastoral
race, and dwelt on the river Yamuna (Jumna), in Vnndavana, on
the western side, and in Gokula on the other. In those days,
Kansa, Eaja of the Bhojas, having deposed his father, Ugrasena,
ruled in the city of Mathura, near Vnndavana. Ugrasena had a
brother named Devaka, and Devaka had a daughter named Do-
vaki, who married Yasu-deva, son of /Sura, also a descendant of Yadu.
The history of Krishna's birth, as given in the Maha-bharata and
followed by the Vishnu Purawa, is that Vishmi plucked out two of
his own hairs, one white, the other black. These two hairs entered
the wombs of RohM and Devaki ; the white hair became Bala-
rama and the black (krishm) hair (kesa) became Krishna or Kesava,