The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s3.4

c7.s3.4

That form, from the express mention of the subjects of the dramatic exhibitions, we may deduce to have been of the nature of a religious drama. It is difficult not to see in the Kaṃsavadha, the death of Kaṃsa at the hands of Kṛṣṇa, the refined version of an older vegetation ritual in which the representative of the outworn spirit of vegetation is destroyed. Colour is given to this theory by the remarkable fact that in one reading the partisans of the young Kṛṣṇa are red in hue, those of Kaṃsa are black. Now as Kṛṣṇa’s name indicates black, it would be almost inevitable that the original attribution of red to his followers should be corrected by well-meaning scribes to black, and this explains effectively the transposition found in the bulk of the manuscripts. In the red hue of Kṛṣṇa’s supporters as against the black of those of Kaṃsa we probably have a distinct reminiscence of another side of the slaying of the vegetation spirit.¹ The contest is often presented as one between summer and winter, and we have seen in the Mahāvrata what is probably a primitive form of this contest; the white Vaiçya fights with the black Çūdra for the sun, and attains possession of its symbolical form. The red of Kṛṣṇa’s following then proclaims him as the genius of summer who overcomes the darkness of the winter.