ian and Christian legend
are afforded by the stories and representations of the birth and
infancy of Krishna. These have been elaborately discussed by Weber in
a well-known monograph.[1092] Krishna is represented with his mother,
much as the infant Christ with the Madonna; he is born in a
stable,[1093] and other well-known incidents such as the appearance of
a star are reproduced. Two things strike us in these resemblances.
Firstly, they are not found in the usual literary version of the
Indian legend,[1094] and it is therefore probable that they represent
an independent and borrowed story: secondly, they are almost entirely
concerned with the mythological aspects of Christianity. Many
Christians would admit that the adoration of the Virgin and Child is
unscriptural and borrowed from the worship of pagan goddesses who were
represented as holding their divine offspring in their arms. If this
is admitted, it is possible that Devaki and her son may be a replica
not of the Madonna but of a pagan prototype. But there is no
difficulty in admitting that Christian legends and Christian art may
have entered northern India from Bactria and Persia, and have found a
home in Muttra. Only it does not follow from this that any penetrating
influence transformed Hindu thought and is responsible for Krishna's
divinity, for the idea of _bhakti_, or for the theology of the
Bhagavad-gita. The borrowed features in the Krishna story are
superficial and also late. They do not occur in the Mahabharata and
the earliest authority cited by Weber is Hemadri, a writer of the
thirteenth century. Allowing that what he describes may have existed
several centuries before his own date, we have still no ground for
tracing the main ideas of Vaishnavism to Christianity and the later
vagaries of Krishnaism are precisely the aspects of Indian religion
which most outrage Christian sentiment.

One edition of the Bhavishya Purana contains a summary of the book
of Genesis from Adam to Abraham.[1095] Though it is a late
interpolation, it shows conclusively that the editors of Puranas had
no objection to borrowing from Christian sources and it maybe that
some incidents in the life of Krishna as related by the Vishnu,
Bhagavata and other Puranas are borrowed from the Gospels, such as
Kamsa's orders to massacre all male infants when Krishna is born, the
journey of Nanda, Krishna's foster-father, to Mathura in order to pay
taxes and the presentation of a pot of ointm