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Updated: May 9, 2025
But if Mohammedan influence favoured the formation of corporations pledged to worship one particular deity, it acted less by introducing something new than by quickening a line of thought already existing. The Bhagavad-gîtâ is as complete an exposition of sectarian pantheism as any utterances posterior to Mohammedanism.
The same distinction of spheres is not wholly lost in Hinduism, for though the great philosophic works treat of God under various names they mostly ignore minor deities, and though the language of the Bhagavad-gîtâ is exuberant and mythological, yet only Krishna is God: all other spirits are part of him.
But the incorrigible subtlety of the Oriental intellect has vitiated much of their symbology, and the sentiment of sheer wonder is stimulated rather than that of orderly imagination. To read the "Arabian Nights" or the "Bhagavad-Gita" is a sort of dissipation; upon the unhackneyed mind of the child it leaves a reactionary sense of depression.
They were priests that were poets, and poets that were seers. But they were not sorcerers. They could not provide successors equal to themselves. It was the later clergy that pulled poetry from the infinite, stuffed it into idols and prostituted it to nameless shames. In the Bhagavad-Gita it is written: "Nothing is greater than I. In scriptures I am prayer.
Even more numerous, especially in the north, are those who use the name of Krishna, the other great incarnation of Vishnu. I shall discuss in some detail below the many elements combined in the complex figure of Krishna but in one way or another he was connected with the earliest forms of Vishnuite monotheism and is the chief figure in the Bhagavad-gîtâ, its earliest text-book.
The omission of the Vedânta is remarkable but perhaps it is included under Veda. The Mahâbhârata contains a hymn which praises Śiva under 1008 names and is not without resemblance to the Bhagavad-gîtâ. It contains a larger number of strange epithets, but Śiva is also extolled as the All-God, who asks for devotion and grants grace.
If so, the evolution of Bhâgavata theology will be that Kṛishṇa, a great hero in a tribe lying outside the sphere of Brahmanism, is first identified with Vâsudeva, the god of that tribe, and then both of them with Vishṇu. At this stage the Bhagavad-gîtâ was composed.
At any rate they anathematized his teaching with a violence unusual in Indian theology. In spite of such lively controversy he found time to write thirty-seven works, including commentaries on the Upanishads, Bhagavad-gîtâ and Vedânta Sûtras.
He alone is meant by the prophecy attributed to Gautama Buddha Himself, that “a Buddha named Maitreye, the Buddha of universal fellowship” should, in the fullness of time, arise and reveal “His boundless glory.” To Him the Bhagavad-Gita of the Hindus had referred as the “Most Great Spirit,” the “Tenth Avatar,” the “Immaculate Manifestation of Krishna.”
One of the main theses of the Nârâyaṇîya is the identity of Nârâyaṇa and Vâsudeva, the former being a Brahmanic, the latter a non-Brahmanic name for the Deity. The celebrated Bhagavad-gîtâ which is still held in such respect that, like the New Testament or Koran, it is used in law courts for the administration of oaths, is an early scripture of the Bhâgavata sect.
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