Krishna- Hindu GodDeity"The Dark One"

Birth and Deliverance

Vishnu's eighth avatar entered the world through stealth and divine misdirection. Kamsa, the tyrannical king of Mathura, had learned from prophecy that his sister Devaki's eighth child would kill him. He imprisoned Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, killing each of their children as they were born. When the eighth child came, divinity intervened.

Krishna was born at midnight on the eighth day of the dark half of Shravana. The prison doors opened of their own accord. The guards fell asleep. Vasudeva lifted the infant and walked out into a storm. The Yamuna was flooding, but the waters parted to let them pass, and the serpent Shesha spread his hoods above them against the rain. In Gokul, the cowherd chief Nanda and his wife Yashoda had just given birth to a daughter. Vasudeva exchanged the infants and returned to prison. When Kamsa seized the baby girl to dash her against a stone, she slipped from his hands, rose into the air, and revealed herself as the goddess Yogamaya. His death, she told him, had already escaped.

Childhood in Vrindavan

In Gokul and the forests of Vrindavan, Krishna grew among cowherds. He stole freshly churned butter and shared it with friends and monkeys. When Yashoda looked in his mouth after accusations that he had eaten dirt, she saw every world and every age contained in the child's open mouth. Overwhelmed, she forgot the vision through Krishna's maya, and went back to being his mother.

Kamsa kept sending assassins. The demoness Putana disguised herself as a beautiful woman and offered her poisoned breast to the infant. Krishna nursed and drained her life with the milk. He subdued the serpent Kaliya, who had been poisoning the Yamuna, by dancing on the serpent's many hoods until Kaliya submitted and departed downstream.

The Lifting of Govardhana

When Krishna convinced the people of Vrindavan to worship the local Govardhana Hill instead of Indra, the king of gods retaliated with seven days of devastating storms. Krishna lifted the entire mountain on his little finger and held it as an umbrella over the village. The rain fell. The lightning struck. The wind howled. And the mountain did not move. Indra exhausted his fury against a child holding a hill with casual ease, then descended to offer worship.

The Rasa Lila

On autumn nights, Krishna played his flute along the banks of the Yamuna. The gopis of Vrindavan heard the melody and left their homes, their husbands, their churning and cooking, and followed the sound into the moonlit forest. In the great circle dance, Krishna multiplied himself so that each gopi danced with her own Krishna, each believing herself specially beloved.

Radha, not named in the Bhagavata Purana or the earlier epics, emerged in Jayadeva's twelfth-century Gita Govinda as the supreme gopi. Her love for Krishna was not serene. She raged with jealousy and burned when he was near. The Gita Govinda moves through their quarrels and reunions as through seasons.

The Slaying of Kamsa

Krishna and his brother Balarama traveled to Mathura for a wrestling tournament Kamsa had arranged. In the arena, they defeated Kamsa's champions Chanura and Mushtika. Then Krishna seized Kamsa himself, dragged him from his throne, and killed him barehanded. He freed his parents from prison and restored the rightful king Ugrasena to the throne.

Charioteer and Strategist

As an adult, Krishna built the golden island-city of Dwarka off the coast of Gujarat and became its king. He married Rukmini, whom he abducted from an unwilling betrothal to Shishupala.

When the war between Pandavas and Kauravas became inevitable, Krishna offered both sides a choice: his army, or himself alone and unarmed. Duryodhana chose the army. Arjuna chose Krishna. On the battlefield, Krishna served as Arjuna's charioteer.

Before the war, Krishna went to Hastinapura as peace envoy. Duryodhana rejected his terms and tried to bind him in chains. Krishna revealed his cosmic form to the assembled court, and the attempt collapsed.

During the eighteen days of fighting, Krishna guided the Pandavas through crises that would have destroyed them. When Bhishma was devastating the Pandava forces, Krishna seized a chariot wheel and charged at him, nearly breaking his vow not to bear arms. Bhishma lowered his bow and welcomed the prospect of dying at the Lord's hands. Krishna's counsel bent the rules of righteous warfare: he counseled the half-truth that broke Drona's will to fight, and directed Bhima to strike Duryodhana below the waist in their final duel. Each stratagem won the war and stained the victory.

The Song of the Lord

On the morning of battle, Arjuna saw his kinsmen arrayed against him and refused to fight. He dropped his bow. Krishna, from the driver's seat, spoke.

The Bhagavad Gita unfolds as a conversation between a man paralyzed by grief and a god disguised as his charioteer. Krishna taught that the self cannot be killed and that action without attachment to its fruit is freedom.

When Arjuna asked to see Krishna's true form, Krishna revealed the Vishvarupa: all beings and all time, all creation and destruction at once. Arjuna saw the warriors of both armies rushing into Krishna's mouths like rivers flowing into the sea. He trembled and begged Krishna to resume his gentle human form.

Arjuna picked up his bow.

Death and Departure

Thirty-six years after Kurukshetra, the Yadava clan destroyed itself in drunken fighting at Prabhasa, fulfilling a curse by the sages Vishvamitra, Kanva, and Narada, whom Yadava youths had mocked. Krishna sat alone in the forest in meditation. A hunter named Jara, mistaking his foot for a deer, shot an arrow that pierced the one vulnerable spot. Rather than anger, Krishna blessed the hunter and departed his mortal form. Dwarka sank beneath the waves. The Kali Yuga began.