feudal hero who throughout the story
takes, by far, the leading part. Between this hero and Krishna the God,
there is no very clear connection. The circumstances in which Vishnu has
taken form as Krishna are nowhere made plain. Except on the two occasions
mentioned, Krishna is apparently not recognized as God by others and does
not himself claim this status. Indeed it is virtually only as an
afterthought that the epic is used to transmit his great sermon, and
almost by accident that he becomes the most significant figure in the
story. Even the sermon at first sight seems at variance with his actions
as a councillor--his repeated recourse to treachery ill consorting with
the paramountcy of duty. In point of fact, such a conflict can be easily
reconciled for if God is supreme, he is above and beyond morals. He can
act in any way he pleases and yet, as God, can expect and receive the
highest reverence. God, in fact, is superior to ethics. And this viewpoint
is, in fact, to prove a basic assumption in later versions of the story.
Here it is sufficient to note that while the _Mahabharata_ describes these
two contrasting modes of behaviour, no attempt is made to face the exact
issue. Krishna as God has been introduced rather than explained and we are
left with the feeling that much more than has been recorded remains to be
said.

This feeling may well have dogged the writers who put the _Mahabharata_
into its present shape for, a little later, possibly during the sixth
century A.D., an appendix was added. This appendix was called the
_Harivansa_ or Genealogy of Krishna[10] and in it were provided all those
details so manifestly wanting in the epic itself. The exact nature of
Krishna is explained--the circumstances of his birth, his youth and
childhood, the whole being welded into a coherent scheme. In this story
Krishna the feudal magnate takes a natural place but there is no longer
any contradiction between his character as a prince and his character as
God. He is, above all, an incarnation of Vishnu and his immediate purpose
is to vanquish a particular tyrant and hearten the righteous. This
viewpoint is maintained in the _Vishnu Purana_, another text of about the
sixth century and is developed and illustrated in the tenth and eleventh
books of the _Bhagavata Purana_. It is this latter text--a vast compendium
of perhaps the ninth or tenth century--which affords the fullest account
in literature of Krishna's story.

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