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88 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Now let us take Krishna.
There are four persons who go by the name Krishna. One Krishna is the son of Satyavati and father of Dhratarashtra, Pandu and Vidur. Second Krishna is the brother of Subhadra and friend of Arjuna. Third Krishna is the son of Vasudeva and Devaki and was resident of Mathura. Fourth Krishna is the one brought up by Nanda and Yeshoda at Gokul and it was he who killed Shishupal. If the Krishna of the Krishna cult is the same as the Krishna son of Devaki there can be no doubt that Krishna originally also was anti-Vedic. From the Chhandogya Upanishad it appears that he was a pupil of Ghora Angiras. What did Ghora Angiras teach him ? This is what the Chhandogya Upanishad says on the subject :
“Ghora, the descendant of Angiras, having declared this (the preceding mystical lore) to Krishna the son of Devaki, said to him that (which, when he heard) he became free from thirst (i.e. desire), viz., ‘let a man at the time of his death have recourse to these three texts, ‘Thou art the undecaying, thou art the imperishable, thou art the subtle principle of breath.”
The commentator on this text of the Upanishad explains :
“A person, Ghora by name, and an Angirasa by family, having declared this doctrine of sacrifice to Krishna the son of Devaki, his pupil, then said etc. The connexion of the last word ‘said’, is with the words which occur some way below, ‘these three etc., And having heard this doctrine he became free from desire for any kinds of knowledge. In this manner he praises this knowledge of the Purusha-sacrifice by saying that it was so distinguished that it destroyed all thirst in Krishna, the son of Devaki, for any other knowledge. He now tells us that Ghora Angirasa said after declaring this knowledge to Krishna. It was this : ‘Let him who knows the aforesaid sacrifice, at the time of his death have recourse to, mutter, these three texts, pranasamsitam means, ‘thou art the very minute, and subtle principle of breath.”
Obviously the doctrine taught by Ghora Angiras to Krishna was opposed to the Vedas and the Vedic sacrifices as a means of spiritual salvation. On the contrary Vishnu is a Vedic God. Yet his cult is established much later than that of Shiva. Why there has been so much neglect of Vishnu it is difficult to understand.
Similarly Rama though not anti-vedic is unknown to the Vedas. What was the necessity of starting his cult and that too at so late a stage in the history of the country ?
We may now take up the third question—namely what is the relative position of these new Gods to the old Pauranic Gods.