most natural conclusion then is that it came from the people who are described in it, some tribe that pastured their herds in the woodlands near Mathurā. Perhaps these herdsfolk were Ābhīras, ancestors of the modern Āhīr tribes. If so, it would be natural that their cult should attract attention; for sometimes Ābhīras counted for something in society, and we even find a short-lived dynasty of Ābhīra kings reigning in Nasik in the third century A.D.[1] Be this as it may, it seems very likely that some pastoral tribe had a cult of a divine child blue or black of hue, and perhaps actually called by them Kṛishṇa or Kaṇha, "Black-man" (observe that henceforth Kṛishṇa is regularly represented with a blue skin), a cult in which gross rustic fantasy had free play; that it came in some circles to be linked on to the epic cycle of Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva; and that some Bhāgavatas, seeing in it latent possibilities, gave it polished literary expression and thereby established it as a part of the Vāsudēva legend. It quickly seized upon the popular imagination and spread like wild-fire over India. For it satisfied many needs. The tenderness of the father and still more of the mother for the little babe, their delight in the sports of childhood, the amorist's pleasure in erotic adventure, and, not by
- ↑ Rapson, Catal. of the Coins of the Andhra Dynasty, etc., pp. xliv, lxii, lxix, cxxxiii-cxxxvi, clxii; Indian Antiq., xlvii, p. 85, etc.
