Indian Antiquary Vol 03

SR No.: 032495
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 420
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 59

FEBRUARY, 1874.]
WEBER ON THE KRISHNAJANMASHTAMI
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ORIGIN OF THE FESTIVAL OF KRISHNAJANMASHTAMI
Translated from the German of Prof. A. Weber. (Continued from page 25.)
The question now presents itself, as to what Christian land we are to think of as the Svetadvipa of the legend. As the journey is by sea, we must take the nearest, Alexandria. Lassen (II, 1100) prefers Parthia, "because the tradition that the apostle Thomas preached the Gospel in that land is an old one;" but I am unable to see how that can turn the scale one way or the other. The connection with Alexandria by sea is relatively the easiest, and we have documents of all sorts in sufficient number to prove that there was a brisk traffic by that route. Direct proof for this supposition there is none. We can therefore only posit it as a probability.
The case is somewhat better when we proceed to ask to what date the pilgrimage to the Svetdvipa is to be assigned. We can answer with confidence that it must of course have been at some adate previous to Muhammad; i. e., as far as Alexandria is concerned, before the year 640, in which it was taken by the Moslems. But can we define the time more closely? Here it would be of great consequence if we could find reason to suppose that the festival of Krishna's birthday, which is the starting-point of our investigations, and the pictorial representation of him as a suckling at the mother's breast, which forms an integral part of that festival, came to India as early as the journey of Narada. For the picture could have been taken over only at a time when "the Madonr'a and Child" had already on their side won a firm and sure place in Christian ritual. But the legend of the Mahd Bharatat contains, as might have been expected from its character, nothing of the kind, and we cannot therefore avail ourselves
Conf. the previous note on the identity in Kalidesa's time of Vishnu and Krishna.
In the account of the ten avatáras of Vishnu which follows immediately after, Satvata (Krishn) is spoken of only as a warlike hero who came into the world to conquer numerous demons and assist the Pandavas. It is true that Kansa is at the head of these demons (the account begins M. Bh. XII. 12953: dvâparasya kaleschaira samdhau paryavasanike | pradurbhavaḥ Kansahetor Mathurayam bhavishyati), but no details are given of the way in which he "appeared."
II give the chief passages from Piper. "This omission of Mary (from a representation on Roman sarcophagi of the infant Christ) serves to prove how far from prominent the honour paid to her was at that time, that is, in the fourth century. And we know from other sources that the epoch of the Nestorian controversies which circled round the name Mother of God' (Beorókos) was the decisive one for the Maria-cult. The first Maria churches in Christendom were built at Rome and Constantinople immediately after the condemnation of Nestorius (who was not willing to use that name without a reservation) and the recognition of the title by the general council of Ephesus in the year 431.
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of such an argument in fixing the probable time of Nárada's journey. But we may make use of such a chronological argument when we consider the birthday festival itself, and the way in which Krishna is represented in it. Here, however, we are on the strange ground of Christian archaology, and must try first to learn our way a little. According to the view hitherto almost universally accepted, the "Madonna with the Child" is a subject little known to the early Christian centuries. According to Piper's representation, for example, the adoration of the Virgin was even in the fourth century far from prominent, and we are to date its decisive introduction from the Nestorian disputes in the fifth century. The S. Maria Maggiore church, built by order of Sixtus III. (432), after the council of Ephesus in honour of Maria GeoTOKOS (Mother of God), which still exists, and is adorned with mosaics of the same date representing "the beginning of the life of the Lord," from the Annunciation to the scene in the Temple, has no representation of the birth itself. And in fact the birthday of Jesus began to be celebrated after the fourth century. Haas, in the Mittheilungen der K. K. Central Commission zur Erh. der Baudenkmäler (1,859 pp. 208, 209), bears similar testimony. So does Mrs. Jameson in her praiseworthy book Legends of the Madonna as represented in the Fine Arts (2nd ed. London, 1857). And Mrs. Jameson discusses the very representations with which we are concerned here, those in which the Madonna is suckling the Child, and refers them directly to the Nestorian controversy. For Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, asserted that the Virgin Mary
The church at Rome still stands. It is the Church S. Maria Maggiore, and is adorned with mosaics of that date, the oldest church pictures extant, in which the first part of the life of the Lord is represented, from the Annunciation to the scene in the Temple. The birth is not among these scenes, and in the adoration of the wise men the infant Christ. And is sitting, not in the lap of the holy Virgin, but alone on a throne; which is a departure from the traditional representation of the oldest Christian art, as we find it on sarcophagi and in the pictures on the walls of the catacombs. And the representation of the birth of Christ in general is rare at this date; it is found, among the many Roman sarcophagi, as we have shown above, only on two, and on the two sarcophagi from Milan and on one at Arles. This is of doctrinal importance, not so much as regards Mary, but on account of the conception of the person of Christ himself and of the whole work of redemption, and this prominence of the end of his life as contrasted with the beginning corresponds exactly to a similar phenomenon in the sacred calendar, where it is still more surprising. The celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ weekly every Friday and Sunday, and yearly at Easter, dates from the second century, while the birth of the Lord was first celebrated in the fourth."