Studies in the Epics and Puranas c12.55

c12.55

It has been suggested that the Kṛṣṇa in the Purāṇas and the Kṛṣṇa in the Mahābhārata are distinct personages. Mutual exclusiveness of the two sources has been satisfactorily explained above. It is felt that the lascivious, lustful, immoral Kṛṣṇa of Gokula cannot be the same person as the friend of the Pāṇḍavas and the great teacher of the *Bhagavadgītā*. For one thing, it has not been definitely proved whether Kṛṣṇa had questionable relations with the Gopīs. On account of the absence of any reference in the *Jātaka* story and the *Mahābhārata* to the relations of Kṛṣṇa with the Gopīs, which is found in the *Harivaṃśa* and the Purāṇas, some scholars hold that there was no basis in fact for the Gopi stories.³⁶ The antiquity of the tradition about the Gopīs would be evident from the fact that Aśvaghoṣa (first century A.D.) refers to them in his *Buddhacarita* (IV. 14). Comparisons with later accounts show how each subsequent writer has added from his imagination to the story. Again, the age of Kṛṣṇa when he was in Gokula entirely speaks against any blot to his character,—he was a mere boy. This appears precisely to be the reason why Śiśupāla was silent regarding these incidents in the reviling scene in the Sabhāparvan of the *Mahābhārata*. Further, Kṛṣṇa never visited Gokula again after he left it once, which would be inexplicable if he had immoral connections with the cowherd maidens. At the most, all that we can say regarding Kṛṣṇa's life and doings in Gokula is that his youthful loves did not go beyond violent flirtations and a taste for group dancing and singing, and they were rather a precocious manifestation of his richly artistic and vital nature. It may be noted that even in the latest accounts, it is nowhere mentioned that Kṛṣṇa hankered after the Gopīs; it was they who went mad after him. No blot can be ascribed to his character in any case. Many of the stories associated with Kṛṣṇa's life in Gokula which have been added by later works are mere symbolizations. There is thus nothing inconsistent in identifying the Purāṇic Kṛṣṇa with the epic Kṛṣṇa. The various accounts in the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas show no such hopeless incompatibility as would, by itself, give a prima facie justification for the theory of two Kṛṣṇas—one, the warrior, statesman and teacher of the Bhagavadgītā at the time of the Bhārata war, and the other, the devotion-inspirer, the beloved of the Gopīs, of Vṛndāvana of a later time. There is indeed no inherent improbability in Kṛṣṇa's being a cowherd in his childhood as well as a warrior-teacher in his later life.