Shri Krishna

01Midnight in Kamsa’s prison

Kamsa, king of Mathura, had heard a voice from the sky say that the eighth child of his sister Devaki would kill him. He locked Devaki and Vasudeva away and killed six of their children. The Bhagavata Purana, in its tenth skandha, tells that Krishna was born at midnight on the eighth day of the dark half of Bhadrapada, under Rohini nakshatra, the night now kept as Janmashtami. The chains fell open and the guards slept. Vasudeva carried the child across the flooded Yamuna to Gokul, left him with Yashoda, and brought back her newborn daughter, Yogamaya.

02Gokul, Vrindavan, Mathura

The cowherd boy of Vraja stole butter, played the flute on the Yamuna bank, and danced the raas with the gopis on the autumn full moon. He also killed Putana and the serpent Kaliya, and for seven days held up the hill of Govardhan on one finger to shelter Vraja from Indra’s rain. Annakut and Govardhan Puja are still kept the day after Diwali. Called to Mathura, he killed Kamsa, freed his parents and restored Ugrasena to the throne. He and Balarama then studied at the ashram of Rishi Sandipani in Avantika, the city now called Ujjain.

Battle · Traditional reckoning: c. 3138 BCE, 36 years before Kali YugaThe Mahabharata War at KurukshetraThe war of the Itihasa, fought on the Dharmakshetra of the Kurus over eighteen days. Before the first arrow flew, Shri Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna between the two armies.Read →

03Dvaraka and Kurukshetra

Jarasandha of Magadha attacked Mathura again and again, so Krishna moved the Yadavas to a new city on the western sea, Dvaraka. In the Mahabharata he is the Pandavas’ friend and counsellor. He went to Hastinapura as their envoy and asked for only five villages; Duryodhana refused even a needle’s point of land. In the war he took no weapon and drove Arjuna’s chariot. When Arjuna sank down between the two armies, unwilling to fight his own elders, Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita: seven hundred shlokas in eighteen chapters of the Bhishma Parva, on duty done without attachment to its fruit, on the undying Self, and on bhakti.

04Departure and the Kali Yuga

Thirty-six years after the war, the Mausala Parva tells, the Yadavas destroyed one another in a drunken quarrel at Prabhasa. Krishna sat beneath a tree in the forest and a hunter named Jara, mistaking his foot for a deer, loosed an arrow. With his departure the Kali Yuga began, in 3102 BCE by the traditional reckoning that Aryabhata also used as his epoch. The sea then rose over Dvaraka. His leelas are sung in the Bhagavata Purana, the Harivamsha and the Vishnu Purana, and in the poems of Surdas, Meerabai, Jayadeva and the Alvars.

Dynasty · Treta and Dvapara Yugas into the Kali Yuga (traditional reckoning)Chandravansha (Lunar line: Yadavas, Pauravas and Kurus)The Lunar dynasty runs from Soma through Budha and Pururavas to Yayati, whose sons Yadu and Puru founded the Yadava and Paurava houses. From Puru came Bharata, after whom the land is named, and Kuru, whose descendants fought at Kurukshetra.Read →