On this view, Kṛṣṇa is to be understood as more closely associated with a warrior milieu than Viṣṇu, since most early information about him comes from epic texts. Viṣṇu, by contrast, appears in the Vedas, so knowledge about him would have been transmitted by
brahmans. It is unclear at what point in time the two cults merged, if they were ever truly separate. Certainly this happened by the time of the
Viṣṇu Purāṇa (c. fifth century CE), which declares Kṛṣṇa to be an
avatāra of Viṣṇu; yet there are a number of indications that the interidentification was much older than that. A pillar at Ghoṣuṇḍi has often been interpreted as implying that Kṛṣṇa was worshiped alongside Nārāyaṇa, who in turn is closely related to Viṣṇu, in the first century BCE; and in a series of icons from the Kushan period (first and second centuries CE) Kṛṣṇa bears a series of weapons associated with Viṣṇu: the club, the disk, and sometimes the conch.
The Kṛṣṇa to whom reference is made in each of these cases is usually designated Vāsudeva. This patronymic title is one he inherits as head of the Vrṣṇi lineage of Mathura.
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