Text 24]
Krṣṇa Is the Source of All Incarnations
161
sutaḥ —the son of Añjana (Lord Buddha);  kīkaṭeṣu —in the province of Gayā (Behar);  bhaviṣyati —will take place.
TRANSLATION
Then, in the beginning of Kali-yuga, the Lord will appear as Lord Buddha, the son of Añjana, in the province of Gayā, just for the purpose of deluding those who are envious of the faithful theist.
PURPORT
Lord Buddha, a powerful incarnation of the Personality of Godhead, appeared in the province of Gayā (Bihar) as the son of Añjana, and he preached his own conception of nonviolence and deprecated even the animal sacrifices sanctioned in the  Vedas . At the time when Lord Buddha appeared, the people in general were atheistic and preferred animal flesh to anything else. On the plea of Vedic sacrifice, every place was practically turned into a slaughterhouse, and animal killing was indulged in unrestrictedly. Lord Buddha preached nonviolence, taking pity on the poor animals. He preached that he did not believe in the tenets of the  Vedas  and stressed the adverse psychological effects incurred by animal killing. Less intelligent men of the age of Kali, who had no faith in God, followed his principle, and for the time being they were trained in moral discipline and nonviolence, the preliminary steps for proceeding further on the path of God realization. He deluded the atheists because such atheists who followed his principles did not believe in God, but they kept their absolute faith in Lord Buddha who himself was the incarnation of God. Thus the faithless people were made to believe in God in the form of Lord Buddha. That was the mercy of Lord Buddha: He made the faithless faithful to him.
Killing of animals before the advent of Lord Buddha was the most prominent feature of the society. They claimed that these were Vedic sacrifices. When the  Vedas  are not accepted through the authoritative discipline succession, the casual readers of the  Vedas  are misled by the flowery language of that system of knowledge. In the  Bhagavad-gītā  a comment has been made on such foolish scholars. The foolish scholars of Vedic literature who do not care to receive the transcendental message through the transcendental realized sources of discipline succession are sure to be bewildered. To them, the ritualistic ceremonies are considered to be all in all. They have no depth of knowledge, according to the  Bhagavad-gītā . The whole system of the  Vedas  is to lead one gradually to the path of