The earliest followers of each were from the lower classes of society, those of Krishna being herdsmen and milkmaids. Christ's most ardent worshipers have from the first been women. "Chrishna," to quote the authority last mentioned, "continues to this hour the darling god of the women of India." McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopedia" notes the following events in the history of Krishna which correspond with those related of Christ: "That he was miraculously born at midnight of a human mother, and saluted by a chorus of Devatas [angels]; that he was cradled among cowherds, during which period of life he was persecuted by the giant Kansa, and saved by his mother's flight; the miracles with which his life abounds, among which were the raising of the dead and the cleansing of the leprous" (Art. Krishna). The celebrated missionary and traveler, Pere Huc, who made a journey of several thousand miles through China and Thibet, says: "If we addressed a Mogul or Thibetan this question, Who is Krishna? the reply was instantly, 'The savior of men.'" "All that converting the Hindoos to Christianity does for them," says Robert Cheyne, "is to change the object of their worship from Krishna to Christ." Of Krishna's gospel, the "Bhagavad-Gita," "Appleton's Cyclopedia" says: "Its correspondence with the New Testament is indeed striking." The parallels between Krishna and Christ to be found in the Hindoo scriptures and the Christian Gospels are too numerous and too exact to be accidental. The legends of the one were borrowed from the other. It is admitted by Christian scholars that Krishna lived many centuries before Christ. To admit the priority of the Krishna legends is to deny, to this extent, the originality of the Gospels. To break the force of the logical conclusion to be drawn from this some argue that while Krishna himself antedated Christ, the legends concerning him are of later origin and borrowed from the Evangelists. Regarding this contention Judge Waite, in his "History of the Christian Religion," says: "Here then, we have the older religion and the older god. This, in the absence of any evidence on the other side, ought to settle the question. To assume without evidence that the older religion has been interpolated from the later, and that the legends of the older hero have been made to conform to the history of a later character, is worse than illogical--it is absurd." Sir William Jones, one of the best Christian authorities on Sanscrit literature, and the translator of the "Bhagavad-Gita," says: "That the name of Krishna, and the general outline of his history, were long anterior to the birth of our Savior, and probably to the time of Homer [950 B. C.], we know very certainly" (Asiatic Researches, Vol. I, p. 254). Buddha.