Krishna

At midnight in a prison cell in Mathura, the guards slept standing at their posts and the iron doors swung open by themselves. A man named Vasudeva lifted a newborn into a basket, stepped over the sleeping soldiers, and carried the child out into the teeth of a monsoon storm. Ahead of him the river Yamuna ran black and swollen, and then, as he waded in, the water drew back and let him cross. A great serpent rose behind him and spread its hood above the basket to keep off the rain. Every power in the cosmos had bent itself that night to get one baby safely across a river.

The baby was Krishna, and he would grow into the most beloved god in India. He is counted the eighth avatar of Vishnu and, to many who worship him, the supreme being itself wearing a human shape and playing in the dust of the cowherd villages. His name means dark, or black. The old images give him skin the deep blue of a storm cloud, a single peacock feather in his hair, a length of yellow silk at his waist, and a bamboo flute in his hands.

He was raised across the river in Vrindavan by Nanda the cowherd and his wife Yashoda, who loved him fiercely and never quite believed the rumors about who he was. He was an outrageous child. He crawled to the high hooks where the butter hung cooling in clay pots, tipped them over, and ate the stolen cream with both fists until his face was white with it, and when Yashoda came to scold him he opened his mouth to show her he had eaten nothing, and she saw the entire universe turning inside it: suns, oceans, all the worlds, and her own small house among them. In the evenings he played the flute by the water, and the sound of it drew the cowherd girls out of their homes to dance with him in the dark, Radha above all of them, whose longing for him became the pattern for the soul’s longing after god.

Vrindavan was not the idyll it looked. Kamsa, the tyrant of Mathura who had already murdered Devaki’s first six children, knew the boy fated to kill him was alive somewhere among the herders, and he sent death in disguise. A nurse named Putana came with poison smeared on her breast; the infant Krishna drank her dry and took her life with the milk. When the serpent Kaliya fouled a deep bend of the Yamuna until the water steamed and the cattle that drank there dropped dead, Krishna climbed a kadamba tree on the bank and dropped straight into the poison. He rose dancing on the great snake’s many hoods, his weight driving it under with every step, until Kaliya’s wives begged for its life and he let it slither away downriver. And when Indra, king of the gods, sent a week of drowning rain to punish the village, Krishna lifted the whole of Mount Govardhan on one finger and held it up like an umbrella while the people and their cows sheltered underneath.

The Krishna of the temples is really several older gods folded into one long life. Behind him stands Vasudeva, a hero-deity worshipped in western India centuries before the common era, and behind that a cowherd god called Gopala, and a clan god of the Yadava people, all gathered over generations into a single enormous biography that runs from a hidden infancy to a king’s quiet death. The stories disagree on the details and never seem troubled by it. What held them together was the face of the flute-player.

He did not stay a cowherd. Grown, he came back to Mathura, threw Kamsa down from his throne and killed him, and set the old rightful king back in his place. Later he built the golden city of Dwarka on the western sea and ruled there as a prince among princes. His last and largest role was as counsellor to the five Pandava brothers in the war that consumes the Mahabharata. On the first morning of the battle at Kurukshetra the archer Arjuna looked across the field at his own cousins, teachers, and kin waiting there to be killed, and let his bow slide from his hand. Krishna, who had taken the lowly office of his charioteer, turned in the chariot and answered him, and what he said became the Bhagavad Gita: a long, level instruction on duty, action, and the deathless self that outlasts every body it wears. To settle the matter he let the disguise fall for a moment and showed Arjuna his true form, a vision of numberless mouths and suns and all things being born and swallowed at once, so terrible that Arjuna begged him to be an ordinary friend again.

His power had no real ceiling. He was the universe wearing a body, able to multiply himself so that every girl in the dance believed she partnered him alone, to swallow a forest fire, to raise the dead, to lift a mountain, to know every ending before it arrived. On the battlefield he barely touched a weapon, because he had no need of one; a single choice of his decided the war. The one thing he would not do was fight in Arjuna’s place. He would counsel, and drive the chariot, and keep his own hand off the bow.

What undid him in the end was the body he had agreed to wear. When his own Yadava clan turned on itself in a drunken brawl and slaughtered one another on the shore at Prabhasa, Krishna walked into the forest and lay down to rest with one foot propped against a tree, the pale sole showing through the leaves. A hunter named Jara, tracking game, caught the flash of it, took it for a deer, and loosed an arrow into the one soft part of him. A hunter killed a god by mistake. Krishna forgave him, drew the mortal life out of the mortal shape, and left the world; and by the count of the old texts, the age of darkness we still live in began the moment he did.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Krishna?

Krishna is one of the most widely worshipped gods in Hinduism, counted as the eighth avatar of the god Vishnu and revered by many devotees as the supreme being in human form. He appears across his myths as a cowherd child, a flute-playing lover, a slayer of demons, and a warrior-prince, and he delivers the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita.

How did Krishna die?

Krishna was killed by a hunter named Jara, who mistook the god’s pale foot for a deer among the forest leaves and shot an arrow into it. The arrow struck the one vulnerable part of his mortal body, and Krishna used the moment to leave the world. Hindu tradition holds that the present age of darkness, the Kali Yuga, began at his death.

What is Krishna’s role in the Bhagavad Gita?

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna serves as the charioteer and counsellor of the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. When Arjuna refuses to fight his own relatives, Krishna delivers a long teaching on duty, righteous action, and the immortal soul, and reveals his cosmic universal form to move Arjuna to take up his bow.

Why is Krishna shown with blue skin?

Krishna’s name means “dark” or “black,” and traditional art renders him with skin the deep blue of a storm cloud or the night sky. The color marks him as an infinite, cosmic deity rather than an ordinary man, and it is one of his most recognizable features alongside his peacock feather and bamboo flute.

What are Krishna’s most famous childhood miracles?

As a child in Vrindavan, Krishna subdued the poisonous serpent Kaliya by dancing on its many hoods until it surrendered, and he lifted Mount Govardhan on one finger to shelter his village from a flood sent by the god Indra. He was also famous for stealing butter from the cowherd women, and when his foster mother looked into his mouth she is said to have seen the entire universe within it.

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