South-Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses c8.s5.23

c8.s5.23

Again Krishna on the tree is a familiar figure in paintings and decorative sculptures of temples. The story is related in the *Bhāgavata-Purāṇa* how one day Krishna saw the cow-herd girls bathing naked in the Jumna leaving their clothes on the sand banks of the river and how he took away their clothes and got up a tree standing near by. He did not restore the clothes to the girls till they confessed their error in bathing naked against the teaching of the *Śāstras*. One of the usual processional vehicles in Vishnu temples is the punnai-tree with the naked *Gōpis* standing round it and begging for the return of their clothes (fig. 30).