[47]. See Appendix to this part [p. [645]].
[48]. See Appendix to this article [p. [646]].
[49]. [This is the Pachusan, the four months of Jain retreat, the Vassa or Vassavāsa of the Buddhists. It was held in the rainy season, during which travelling was forbidden, in order to avoid injury to the insect life which abounds at this time (BG, ix. Part i. 113 f.; Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, 80 f.).]
[50]. Dwarka is at the point called Jagat Khunt, of the Saurashtra peninsula. Ka is the mark of the genitive case [?]: Dwarkanath would be the ‘gate of the god’ [‘Lord of Dvārakā’].
[51]. Fifty-seven descents are given, both in their sacred and profane genealogies, from Krishna to the princes supposed to have been contemporary with Vikramaditya. The Yadu Bhatti or Shama Bhatti (the Ahsham Bhatti of Abu-l Fazl) [Āīn, ii. 339], draw their pedigree from Krishna or Yadunath, as do the Jarejas of Cutch.
[52]. With Mathura as a centre and a radius of eighty miles, describe a circle: all within it is Vraj, which was the seat of whatever was refined in Hinduism, and whose language, the Vraj-bhasha, was the purest dialect of India. Vraj is tantamount to the land of the Suraseni, derived from Sursen, the ancestor of Krishna, whose capital, Surpuri, is about fifty miles south of Mathura on the Yamuna (Jumna). The remains of this city (Surpuri) the Author had the pleasure of discovering. The province of the Surseni, or Suraseni, is defined by Manu [Laws, ii. 19, vii. 193, who calls them Surasenakas], and particularly mentioned by the historians of Alexander.
[53]. Vindravana, or the ‘forests of Vindra,’ in which were placed many temples sacred to Kanhaiya, is on the Yamuna, a few miles above Mathura. A pilgrimage to this temple is indispensable to the true votary of Krishna.
[54]. This river is called the Kal Yamuna, or black Yamuna, and Kalidah or the ‘black pool,’ from Kanhaiya having destroyed the hydra Kaliya which infested it. Jayadeva calls the Yamuna ‘the blue daughter of the sun.’
[55]. [The popular worship of Krishna and Rādha is decidedly erotic.] It affords an example of the Hindu doctrine of the Metempsychosis, as well as of the regard which Akbar’s toleration had obtained him, to mention, that they held his body to be animated by the soul of a celebrated Hindu gymnosophist: in support of which they say he (Akbar) went to his accustomed spot of penance (tapasya) at the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges, and excavated the implements, namely, the tongs, gourd, and deer-skin, of his anchorite existence. [For the tale of Akbar and the Brāhman Mukunda see Asiatic Researches, ix. 158.]
[56]. Ran, the ‘field of battle,’ chhor, from chhorna, ‘to abandon.’ Hence Ranchhor, one of the titles under which Krishna is worshipped at Dwarka, is most unpropitious to the martial Rajput. Kalyavana, the foe from whom he fled, and who is figured as a serpent, is doubtless the Tak, the ancient foe of the Yadus, who slew Janamejaya, emperor of the Pandus. [Kālyavana has been identified with Gonanda I. of Kashmīr, but was more probably one of the Bactrian chiefs of the Panjāb (Growse, Mathura, 3rd ed. 56).]