Krishna

Deity

Krishna · कृष्ण

Krishna is the eighth avatar of Vishnu, and the only one worshipped at every stage of a life: as the infant reaching for butter, as the boy with the flute at Vrindavan, as the charioteer at Kurukshetra, and as the king at Dwarka.

The Bhagavad Gita is his teaching, seven hundred verses spoken to Arjuna between two armies about acting without attachment to the result. It sits inside the Mahabharata but is read on its own, and is the text most often given at a death in the family.

Janmashtami, in Bhadrapada, marks his birth at midnight — a fast through the day, the cradle rocked at twelve, and dahi handi the following morning, where a pot of curd is hung high and brought down by a human pyramid. Radha is worshipped with him at Vrindavan and Barsana, and in those places her name comes first.

Govardhan Puja, the day after Diwali, remembers the hill he is said to have lifted on one finger to shelter the cowherds from Indra's rain. A mound of food is built in the shape of the hill and shared out afterwards.

Braj is the country of his childhood and is walked as a circuit rather than visited as a site: Mathura where he was born in a prison cell, Gokul where he was carried across the river the same night, Vrindavan of the flute and the raas, Barsana which is Radha's, and Govardhan itself, circled barefoot over twenty-one kilometres.

The flute, the peacock feather and the yellow pitambar are his marks, and the colour used for him is the dark blue-black that his name means. He is shown standing with the legs crossed and the weight on one foot — a posture used for no other deity, and the reason an image of him is recognisable in silhouette.