Yashoda- Hindu FigureMortal"Mother of Krishna"

Foster Mother of the Divine

Yashoda was the wife of Nanda, chief of the cowherd community in Gokula and later Vrindavan. On the night Krishna was born to Devaki and Vasudeva in the prison of the tyrant Kamsa, Vasudeva secretly carried the newborn across the flooding Yamuna and exchanged him for Yashoda's own newborn daughter. Yashoda became Krishna's foster mother, raising him in ignorance of his divine nature. She nursed him, worried over him, and scolded him like any village mother.

The Child Krishna's Leelas

Yashoda's life with the young Krishna is filled with episodes that blend domestic warmth with divine revelation. The butter-stealing leelas, in which Krishna and his friends raided the household stores, prompted complaints from the gopi women, and Yashoda would scold and chase the mischievous child. When she caught him and tried to tie him to a heavy wooden mortar as punishment, the rope was always two fingers too short. No matter how many ropes she knotted together, they fell short by exactly the same measure. Sweating and exhausted, Yashoda refused to give up. Moved by her stubborn, entirely human determination, Krishna finally allowed himself to be bound. This episode gave him the name Damodara, "he whose belly is bound by rope."

The Cosmic Vision

In the most celebrated episode, the young Krishna ate dirt and Yashoda asked him to open his mouth. When he did, she saw within it the entire universe: all the worlds, the stars, the elements, space, time, and even herself gazing into his mouth. Overwhelmed and terrified, she glimpsed her son's true divine nature before Krishna's maya gently restored her ordinary consciousness. She closed his mouth, picked him up, and went about her day.