Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

The historical Krishna, no doubt, existed. We meet the name first in the Chhandogya XJpanishad where all we can gather about liim is that "he was well known in spiritual tradition m a knowCT _o£^ the Brahmajit, so ^eTTkiimvn^ indeed iiTbls personality aiid the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as KrishiM so n of Demki for all to understand who was mearitT In the same"^ Upanishad we find mention of King Dhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya, and since tradi- tion associated the two together so closely that they are both of them leading personages in the action of the Mahabharata, we may fairly conclude that ffiey were actually contemporaries and that the epicjs to a great extent dealing with historical characters And in the war of Kurukshetra with a historiail occur- rence imprinted firmly on the memory of the race, ^^luiost too that Krishna and Arjun^ were the object of Teligious worship in the ' preTffif istian centuries ; and there is some reason to -suppose” that tti«» y were so in connection with a religious and philo- sophical tradition frotn» which the Gita may have gathered many of its elements and even the founda- tion of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion* and works, and perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or at the least one of the early teachers of this school. The Gita may well in ^ite of its later form represent the outcome in Indian thought of the teaching of Krishna and the connec- tion of that teaching with the historical Krishna, with Atjuna and with the war of Kurukdietia inay

THE DIVINE TEACHER be something more than a dramatic fiction, ^n th e Ma habharata Kris hna is represented both as the his tdn cal characte ^anfl the Avatar ; his worship and Svatarhood must therefore have been well estab- lished by the time — ^apparently from the fifth to the fa y centuries B.C.I— when the old story and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form. There is a hint also in the poem of the story or legend of the Avatar’s early life in Vrindavan which, as developed by the Puranas into an intense and power- ful spiritual symbol, has exercised so profound an influence on the religious mind of India. We have also in the Harivansha an account of t he life of KrisTma, veiy evTdaitly fuIT of legends, which perhaps formed the basis of the Puranic accounts.

But all this, though of considerable historical importance, has none whatever for our present pur- pose. We are concerned only with the figure of the ^vine JTe^^r as it is presented to us in the Gita and with the Power for which it there stands in, the spiritual illummatToh of the human being. ^> ^he Gita acceptit^ human^.^atarhood ; for Ae L ord s^aB^of the rgg^ed, the_^nstarit* manifestati^ of^ the. Divine in humanity^ when He”tKe_etetMl Untorn aMum^ by hi s Ma ya, by jhe power of &e infinite ^nsciousn^ to clothe itself apparently in finite forms, the conditions“^6f becoming whiSi we call J>irtL But it is not this upon which stress is laid, but on the transcendent the cosmic and th e * bah4ni me vyatttdni janmdni.,..samhhavAml yuge yuge. int erna l Divine ; it is on the Simrce of all thi ngs and the Master of aillTnd 6h“the ^ secret in n^n. TTislKis^lhternaT di^ is meant when the