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Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India – Chapter XVII

CHRISTNA GOES TO PERFORM HIS ABLUTIONS AT THE GANGES -  HIS DEATH.

The work of redemption was accomplished, all India felt a younger blood circulate in its veins, everywhere labour was sanctified by prayer, hope and faith warmed all hearts.

Christna understood that the hour had come for him to quit the earth, and to return into the bosom of him who had sent him.

Forbidding his disciples to follow him, he went, one day, to make his ablutions on the banks of the Ganges and wash out the stains that his mortal envelope might have contracted in the struggles of every nature which he had been obliged to sustain against the partisans of the past.

Arrived at the sacred river, he plunged himself three times therein, then, kneeling and looking to heaven, he prayed, expecting death.

In this position he was pierced with arrows by one of those whose crimes he had unveiled, and who, hearing of his journey to the Ganges, had, with a strong troop, followed with the design of assassinating him.

This man was named Angada- According to popular belief condemned, for his crime, to an eternal life on earth, he wanders the banks of the Ganges, having no other food than the remains of the dead, on which he feeds constantly, in company with jackals and other unclean animals.

The body of the God-man was suspended to the branches of a tree by his murderer, that it might become the prey of vultures.

News of the death having spread, the people came in a crowd conducted by Ardjouna, the dearest of the disciples of Christna, to recover his sacred remains. But the mortal frame of the Redeemer had disappeared-no doubt it had regained the celestial abodes . . . and the tree to which it had been attached had become suddenly covered with great red flowers and diffused around it the sweetest perfumes.

Thus ended Christna, victim of the wickedness of those who would not recognize his law, and who had been expelled from amidst the people because of their vices and their hypocrisy.

(Bagaveda-Gita and Brahminical traditions )