Krishna cow

The tradition of Krishna appears to be an amalgamation of several independent deities of ancient India, the earliest to be attested being Vāsudeva. Vāsudeva was a hero-god of the tribe of the Vrishnis, belonging to the Vrishni heroes, whose worship is attested from the 5th-6th century BCE in the writings of Pāṇini, and from the 2nd century BCE in epigraphy with the Heliodorus pillar.At one point in time, it is thought that the tribe of the Vrishnis fused with the tribe of the Yadavas/Abhiras, whose own hero-god was named Krishna.Vāsudeva and Krishna fused to become a single deity, which appears in the Mahabharata, and they started to be identified with Vishnu in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita. Around the 4th century CE, another tradition, the cult of Gopala-Krishna of the Ābhīras, the protector of cattle, was also absorbed into the Krishna tradition.