[387] Vincent Smith, Fine Art in India, pp. 134-138.
[388] In the Sutta-nipâta Mâra, the Evil One is called Kaṇha, the phonetic equivalent of Kṛishṇa in Prâkrit. Can it be that Mâra and his daughters have anything to do with Kṛishṇa and the Gopîs?
[389] Compare the Greek stories of the infant Hermes who steals Apollo's cattle and invents the lyre. Compare too, as having a general resemblance to fantastic Indian legends, the story of young Hephæstus.
[390] Mgr. Bongard, Histoire de la Bienheureuse Marguérite Marie. Quoted by W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 343.
[391] Viṭṭhal or Viṭṭoba is a local deity of Pandharpur in the Deccan (perhaps a deified Brahman of the place) now identified with Kṛishṇa.
[392] Life and Sayings of Râmakṛishṇa. Trans. F. Max Müller, pp. 137-8. The English poet Crashaw makes free use of religious metaphors drawn from love and even Francis Thompson represents God as the lover of the Soul, e.g. in his poem Any Saint.
[393] Though surprising, it can be paralleled in modern times for Kabir (c. 1400) was identified by his later followers with the supreme spirit.
[394] Mahâbhâr. Sabhâp. XIV. Vishṇu Pur. V. xxxiv. The name also occurs in the Taittirîya Âraṇyaka (i. 31) a work of moderate if not great antiquity Nâzâyanâya vidmahe Vasudevâya dhîmahi.
[395] See. Vishṇu Pur. VI. V. See also Wilson, Vishṇu Purâṇa, I. pp. 2 and 17.
[396] Thus the Saura Purâṇa inveighs against the Mâdhva sect (XXXVIII.-XL.) and calls Vishṇu the servant of Śiva: a Purâṇic legal work called the Vriddha-Harita-Samhitâ is said to contain a polemic against Śiva. Occasionally we hear of collisions between the followers of Vishṇu and Śiva or the desecration of temples by hostile fanatics. But such conflicts take place most often not between widely different sects but between subdivisions of the same sect, e.g., Tengalais and Vadagalais. It would seem too that at present most Hindus of the higher castes avoid ostentatious membership of the modern sects, and though they may practise special devotion to either Vishṇu or Śiva, yet they visit the temples of both deities when they go on pilgrimages. Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya in his Hindu Castes and Sects says (p. 364) that aristocratic Brahmans usually keep in their private chapels both a salâgram representing Vishṇu and emblems representing Śiva and his spouse. Hence different observers vary in their estimates of the importance of sectarian divisions, some holding that sect is the essence of modern Hinduism and others that most educated Hindus do not worship a sectarian deity. The Kûrma Purâṇa, Part I. chap. XXII. contains some curious rules as to what deities should be worshipped by the various classes of men and spirits.