It is strange that educated Hindus should have clung so long to the idea that the _Gītā_ is a real utterance of Krishna. The very fact that the poem has always been regarded, not as _Sruti_, but simply as _Smriti_, should have been enough to suggest the truth. A piece of genuine divine teaching, uttered in such circumstances, and before the composition of the earliest Upanishads, would have inevitably found a place among the most authoritative scriptures of the faith. The fact of its having been always regarded as _Smriti_ is sufficient proof by itself that the book does not belong to the Vedic age at all. Another consideration ought also by itself to have been sufficient to save Hindus from such a grave error, namely, this, that _no great religious advance or upheaval followed the time when Krishna is supposed to have lived and taught_. Contrast the mighty revolutions that followed the work of Buddha, of Christ and of Mahommed; and the emptiness of the Krishna claim will become at once apparent. Again, the subject of all the early Upanishads is the nature of the Supreme Spirit, whether called the _Atman_ or _Brahma_. If on the field of Kurukshetra, Krishna had claimed to be the Supreme, as the _Gītā_ says he did, can any one believe that the claim could have been passed unnoticed in the Upanishads? Krishna is mentioned in the _Chāndogya_; Brahma is the subject of the _Chāndogya_: yet there is not the slightest hint anywhere that Brahma has been incarnated, far less that Krishna is Brahma. Such evidence is surely irresistible. One reason why the truth about this myth has been so long in finding its way into the minds of educated Hindus is undoubtedly to be found in the wretchedly inadequate way in which Sanskrit literature is taught in the Universities of India. In Calcutta at least most men who take Sanskrit as one of their subjects for the B. A. Degree get through their examination without having the slightest knowledge of the history of the literature.[84] For some curious results of this very deficient training, see the Appendix.