Krishnaਕ੍ਰਿਸ਼ਨ

Krishna, whose name means the dark one, is among the most widely revered of all Hindu gods. Devotees meet him at every age of life: as a crawling baby with a ball of butter, as a boy dancing on the serpent Kaliya, as a young cowherd whose flute calls the gopis out into the moonlight, as a king and statesman, and as the wise friend who steadies Arjuna before the great war. Few deities in any religion gather so many moods into one figure: playfulness, romance, heroism and philosophy.

Who is Krishna?

Hindu tradition honours Krishna as the eighth avatar of Vishnu, descended to destroy evil, and many traditions go further and worship him as the original, supreme God from whom even Vishnu proceeds. His story is told in the Mahabharata, in its appendix the Harivamsha, and most fully in the Bhagavata Purana. Around him grew the bhakti movement's richest heritage of poetry, music and painting, and his worship spread from India across the world, carried in modern times by movements such as ISKCON, the Hare Krishna movement.

The story of Krishna

Krishna was born at Mathura into the Yadava clan, the son of Vasudeva and Devaki. Devaki's brother, King Kamsa, had heard a prophecy that her child would kill him, so the newborn was carried secretly across the Yamuna river to Gokul, where the cowherd chief Nanda and his wife Yashoda raised him. The child Krishna was adored for his pranks, stealing butter, teasing the cowherd girls, and for miracles and the slaying of demons sent by Kamsa. As a youth he became the divine lover: his flute drew the gopis, the wives and daughters of the cowherds, to dance with him, and first among them was Radha, whose love for Krishna is sung as the soul's longing for God. In time Krishna and his brother Balarama returned to Mathura and killed Kamsa. Finding the kingdom unsafe, Krishna led the Yadavas west to the coast and founded the shining city of Dwarka, where he ruled and married the princess Rukmini.

Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita

In the Mahabharata war between the Pandava and Kaurava cousins, Krishna refused to fight himself but served as charioteer to the Pandava prince Arjuna. On the battlefield, Arjuna faltered at the thought of killing his own kin, and Krishna's answer to him, the Bhagavad Gita, became the most famous scripture of Hinduism: a teaching on duty, action without attachment to results, and devotion. At the war's end Krishna returned to Dwarka, where, the texts say, he died after a huntsman mistook him for a deer and shot him in the heel, his one vulnerable spot.

How is Krishna shown?

Painters show Krishna with blue-black skin, a yellow dhoti and a crown of peacock feathers. As a child he crawls or dances with butter in his hands; as the divine lover he plays the flute among adoring gopis; as the teacher he drives Arjuna's chariot. Rajasthani and Pahari painting of the 17th and 18th centuries made his image famous across the world.

Festivals and temples

Krishna's birthday, Janmashtami, is kept with fasting, midnight celebrations and, in Maharashtra, the human pyramids of Dahi Handi that recall the butter thief. Holi in the Braj country of Mathura and Vrindavan is played in his honour, and devotees celebrate the month of Kartik at his temples. His birthplace is marked by the Krishna Janmasthan Temple at Mathura, his royal city by the Dwarkadhish Temple at Dwarka, and at Puri he is worshipped as Jagannath, the lord of the universe, whose wooden image is carried through the streets in the great Ratha Yatra festival.

Krishna in Punjab

Krishna's friendship with Sudama shows the god from another side. Sudama was a poor Brahmin who had shared Krishna's student days; driven by poverty, he walked to Dwarka carrying nothing but a small bundle of beaten rice, ashamed of so humble a gift. Krishna ran to meet him, washed his dusty feet, seated him on the royal seat and ate the beaten rice from his hands grain by grain with delight, while Sudama could not bring himself to ask for anything. Returning home, the poor man found his hut replaced by a palace. Hindu families still tell the story to teach that God weighs the love in an offering, not its price.

In worship Krishna is rarely alone. Beside him stands Radha, the cowherd girl of Braj whose love for him the poet Jayadeva made immortal in the Gita Govinda in the 12th century. From those poems onward, Radha and Krishna together became the supreme image of divine love in bhakti: Radha's longing for the god is read as the soul's longing for God itself. Their temples show them side by side, swung together in the monsoon swings of Jhulan Leela, and in Braj the everyday greeting is not a word for God but for her: Radhe Radhe.

Krishna is deeply woven into Punjabi Hindu life: Janmashtami crowds fill the temples, kirtan of his names runs through the night, and the Gita is read in homes across the region. Punjabi devotees travel to Mathura, Vrindavan and Dwarka, and in the diaspora, ISKCON and Sanatan temples from Toronto to Melbourne celebrate his festivals, where Punjabi families are among the most devoted congregations.