Hindu gods and heroes : $b studies in the history of the religion of India — John Shaqi
Hindu gods and heroes : $b studies in the history of the religion of IndiaBarnett, Lionel D. (Lionel David)
ReligionEastern
Hindu gods and heroes : $b studies in the history of the religion of India
Barnett, Lionel D. (Lionel David)
Hindu mythology; Hinduism
Kṛishṇa was one of these Kshatriyas. He belonged to the Sātvata or
Vṛishṇi tribe, living in or near the ancient city of Mathurā.
Sometimes in early writings he is styled Kṛishṇa Dēvakīputra, Kṛishṇa
Dēvakī's son, because his mother's name was Dēvakī; sometimes again he
is called Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva, or simply Vāsudēva, which is a patronymic
said to be derived from the name of his father Vasudēva. In later
times we shall find a whole cycle of legend gathering round him, in
which doubtless there is a kernel of fact. Omitting the miraculous
elements in these tales, we may say that the outline of the
Kṛishṇa-legend is as follows: Kṛishṇa's father Vasudēva and his mother
Dēvakī were grievously wronged by Dēvakī's cousin Kaṃsa, who usurped
the royal power in Mathurā and endeavoured to slay Kṛishṇa in his
infancy; but the child escaped, and on growing to manhood killed
Kaṃsa. But Kaṃsa had made alliance with Jarāsandha king of Magadha,
who now threatened Kṛishṇa; so Kṛishṇa prudently retired from Mathurā
and led a colony of his tribesmen to Dvārakā, on the western coast in
Kathiawar, where he founded a new State. There seems to be no valid
reason for doubting these statements. Sober history does not reject a
tale because it is embroidered with myth and fiction.
Now this man Kṛishṇa in the midst of his stirring life of war and
government found time and taste also for the things that are of the
spirit. He talked with men learned in the Upanishads about Brahma and
the soul and the worship of God; and apparently he set up a little
Established Church of his own, in which was combined something of the
idealism of the Upanishads with the worship of a supreme God of grace
and perhaps too a kind of religious discipline, about which we shall
say more later on. It must be confessed that we know sadly little
about his actual doctrine from first hand. All that we hear about it
is a short chapter in the Chhāndōgya Upanishad (iii. 17), where the
Brahman Ghōra Āṅgirasa gives a sermon to Kṛishṇa, in which he compares
the phases of human life to stages in the _dīkshā_ or ceremony of
consecration, and the moral virtues that should accompany them to the
_dakshiṇā_ or honorarium paid to the officiating priests, and he
concludes by exhorting his hearer to realise that the Brahma is
imperishable, unfailing, and spiritual, and quoting two verses from
the Ṛig-vēda speaking of the Sun as typifying the supreme bliss to
which the enlightened soul arises. This does not tell us very much,
and moreover we should remember that here our author, being an
Aupanishada, is more interested in what Ghōra preached to Kṛishṇa than
in what Kṛishṇa accepted from Ghōra's teaching. But we shall find
centuries later in the Bhagavad-gītā, the greatest textbook of the
religion of Kṛishṇa, some distant echoes of this paragraph of the
Chhāndōgya.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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