The Use of Writing in Ancient China

Abstract

Rukminl, Subhadra or the VindhyavasinT. She is only one of the anonymous girls who in their childhood played with Krsna and loved him, according to the oldest texts. She is the deified beloved of the hero. Her previous life in heaven, her marriage and her separation from Kiirsna, her grieving and her final happiness are told with many details and ample descriptions in Bv wherever a suitable place in the old story could be found (for details cf. Tdp). In Bv the simple station of the nomadic herdsmen (cf. the description in the author's Eisenschmiede 184) is changed into a marvellous town with wonderful palaces, etc., as they are described in fairy tales. The herdsman Nanda has become a powerful king whose pompous offerings are attended by the amazed neighboring kings. It is easy to recognize in these descriptions the fiction of some priests of the country of Braj, the villages around Mathurd, where the cult of Krsna is still living to-day, which is visited by thousands of pilgrims every year, where the life of Kirsna and Radha is played even to-day in pantomimic dances and popular plays. But it is a pity that the tradition of these festivals and rituals is rather recent. Only Caitanya and his followers have caused these cults to become such a famous centre of religious life, and the date of Caitanya (15-16th century A. D.) may be regarded as the terminus post quem of the Krsnacarita of Bv.2' In the eyes of these Vaisnavas, the heaven of Krsna, the Goloka (= the world of the cows) is nothing but the likeness of the sacred country of Braj. Kirsna, Rddha and her friends are divine beings who only temporarily have abandoned their domicile in heaven and chosen this country as a stage for their holy human life. Anybody who wanders in Braj from one sacred spot to the other, and hears the legends in the house where Krsna lived as a child (the so-called palace of Nanda in Mahavana), in the small temple at the side-branch of the Yamund where Krsna subdued Kdliya, or at the well of Radhd, etc., such a pilgrim is-one might say-in the heaven of his god, and by performing this pilgrimage (as a kind of magic by analogy) he gains the real access to heaven after his death. Hymns of the god are the proper contents of this pompous type of literature. They are sung and written, they protect the pious men who wear them as charms or keep them in their houses. Nothing in it is left of the wording of the old Krsna-story.