184 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
seem, who must have been established peacefully in India some centuries before his time.
Was Krishna Partha-Sarathi, then, the deliberate preaching of the Gupta dynasty to the (at that time half-Hinduised) peoples of the south side of the Jumna? Was he a hope held out to the democracy, a place made in the national faith for newly imperialised populations? Was it at this period that the play of the Mahabharata was deliberately established as an annual Pandava-lila in the villages of the south, while to Krishna Partha-Sarathi especially temples were built in Dravida-desh? In any case, there is abundant evidence half a century later, when we pass to the reign of Skanda Gupta the grandson of Vikramaditya, of the hold which the Krishna of the Jumna had obtained over the hearts of the imperial house of Pataliputra at Bhitari.[1] In the district of Ghazipur to the west of Benares is still standing a pillar which was raised by the young king on his return from victory over the Huns in A.D. 455. He hastened to his mother, says the inscription, "just as Krishna, when he had slain his enemies, betook himself to his mother Devaki." The pillar was erected to the memory of his father— it may have marked the completion of the requiem ceremonies postponed by war —and in commemoration of the victory just gained by the protection of the gods. It was surmounted finally by a statue of the god Vishnu. This statue has now disappeared, but we
- ↑ Vincent Smith. Early History of India, pp. 267-8.
