Intellectual Bhagavad Gita and emotional Bhagavata Purana
The Mahabharata is traditionally considered inauspicious because it deals with bloodshed and the break-up of a family. This is why people prefer retelling stories of Krishna’s childhood and youth with his mother Yashoda and his beloved Gopikas from the Bhagavata Purana. The only auspicious part of the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita, a summary of Hindu philosophy narrated by Krishna to Arjun on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Had there not been a Bhagavad Gita, people would not have given so much value to the latter half of Krishna’s life.
There are stories full of household quarrels; Krishna multiplies himself to give attention to each of his 16,108 wives
The Bhagavad Gita introduces us to bhakti yoga 2,000 years ago. The Bhagavata Purana elaborates it in fine detail nearly 1,000 years ago. The former gave an intellectual foundation to the latter’s emotional approach to God that swept across India as the bhakti movement about 500 years ago. In this period, local poets such as Meera of Rajasthan and Salabega of Odisha and Narsi Mehta of Gujarat and Vidyapati of Mithila and Tukaram of Maharashtra composed songs on Krishna, bringing him closer to the masses. In their songs, stories of the Bhagavata Purana blended with the philosophy of Bhagavad Gita.
Krishna of Jains and Buddhists
Stories of Krishna abound in the Buddhist and Jain traditions. In the Jain Mahabharata, the battle is not between the Kauravas and Pandavas. The battle is between Krishna of Dwaraka and Jarasandha, the emperor of Magadha, in which the Pandavas support Krishna and the Kauravas support Jarasandha. It is important to note that the Jain Mahabharata runs along the east-west axis of India: Jarasandha is in Magadha, in the east, and Krishna is in Dwaraka, in the west.
The Buddhist Jatakas make no direct reference to Krishna, but a Krishna-like character appears in the Ghata Jatakas, where his quality as a wrestler is highlighted. When he mourns the death of his son, he is consoled by Ghata-Pandita, who is the Bodhisattva.
Householder, husband and father
Krishna’s life in Dwaraka is something of a mystery: few stories of Krishna, the husband and householder are retold. People are familiar with his two most well-known wives, Satyabhama and Rukmini. Many of the Puranas refer to his eight senior queens, and there is also reference to over 1,000 junior wives he gave shelter to after the conquest of Narakasura.
These stories are full of household quarrels. Krishna has to be a good husband to maintain domestic harmony between competing wives. There are stories about how he multiplies himself to give full attention to each of his 16,108 wives. These are, of course, metaphors explaining at one level Krishna’s ability to manage complex situations, and at another level establishing him as divinity.
Comfort with androgyny
Some folk narratives of Krishna draw attention to his androgynous nature. Look at Krishna’s statues in Odisha: he bends like a dancer, which is not how a modern macho man would stand, and he has a braid and nose rings to connect with his mother and to Radha.
In many temples, his image is dressed in female attire (Stri-vesha) on festival days to remind us of Krishna’s feminine form, Mohini. In one South Indian folk story, Krishna and Arjun go around the country, dressed as an old woman and a young girl respectively, tricking villains to do their bidding.
In a tale from north Tamil Nadu, Arjuna’s son, Aravan, by a Naga woman called Ulupi, has to be sacrificed before the war at Kurukshetra. But he refuses to be sacrificed until he gets married. Since no woman is willing to marry him, Krishna takes the form of Mohini and becomes his bride for one night. The next day, Mohini wails for him as a widow.
In the raas leela, only Krishna is supposed to be male. So, when Shiva wants to participate in the raas leela, he takes the form of a gopika and so is worshipped in Vrindavana even today as Gopeshwar Mahadev. Likewise, Arjun and Narada both take the form of women to gain access to the raas leela as per the Padma Purana.
Kindness towards villains
The Krishna stories are unique for their great compassion for the villains. Kamsa, Jarasandha and Duryodhana are the three main villains in Krishna lore. All three are said to have traumatic childhoods: Kamsa is a child of rape who is rejected by his mother at birth. Jarasandha is born malformed at birth; his father’s two queens each give birth to half his body, and the two halves are then fused together by the ogress called Jara. Duryodhana’s mother is blindfolded in solidarity with his blind father, so he is unseen by his parents all his life.
This explains that people perceived to be evil often have been wronged, which makes them so insecure that they become insensitive and dehumanised.
