Krishna's Lineage
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There are the other gods, who come in groups. There are, in alphabetical order, the Ādityas, the Ashvins, the Maruts, the Rudras, the Sādhyas, the Vasus, and the Vishvas. The Ādityas are sons of the goddess Aditi, and they include Indra the king of the gods and the god of thunder and rainfall, Vishnu the transcendent god (Vishnu’s identity as an Āditya is just one of his manifestations; he is in fact the source of everything, including the gods), Vivasvat the sun god, Tvashtri the builder god, Mitra the god of contracts, Varuna the marine god (a recent role for him), and six others besides. Vivasvat’s son Yama is the god of death (not to be confused with the god who is Death). Four gods are the guardians of the four directions: Indra for the east; Yama for the south (to which the dead are taken); Varuna for the west; and Kubera, god of wealth, for the north. The great god Shiva, who is featured in particular in the story of Bāna (Hv 106–13), has several forms among the Rudra gods, a wife of many forms, and a son, Skanda. There is also the goddess Earth, the paradigm of endurance, who plays a central role in the Harivamsha as she whose suffering the gods must assuage. As André Couture has argued, she is the hunchbacked lady straightened out by Krishna at Hv 71.22–35.2
There are the demons, who are generally fought by the gods. They are predominantly the sons and grandsons of Aditi’s sisters Diti and Danu, and are thus also called Daityas and Dānavas (as the descendants of Aditi are the Ādityas; the descendants of Yadu are the Yādavas; of Kuru, the Kauravas; of Bhrigu, the Bhārgavas; of Pāndu, the Pāndavas; and so on). Many demons are famous by name. They threaten the heavens; they change form and take refuge on earth; and they are sometimes banished to the lower regions. Their arrogance is, famously, their downfall, but there is always a next fight. Krishna and his half-brother Baladeva kill many such demons who have taken birth on earth after being killed elsewhere.
There are the ancestors, those who were alive and did good deeds here in the past and are now still alive elsewhere, if remembered and fed by their descendants in ancestral rituals. Unless one becomes famous forever, ritually loyal descendants are necessary for one’s heavenly survival. The kshatriya lineages that are detailed in the Harivamsha in connection with the stories of Krishna contain the kshatriya ancestors, but all kinds of ancestors are active in the world. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and every time you go another generation into the past, you have twice as many ancestors in that generation (to say nothing of everyone else’s ancestors).
There are all the hosts of species of living creatures, born from Aditi’s other sisters. In this ancient Indian world of story, in between plants, animals, and humans on the one hand, and gods, demons, and ancestors on the other, there are a range of superhuman species, each with their own lineages: monsters, ogres, dark-elves, trolls, mountain-elves, wild-elves, light-elves, heavenly nymphs, great snakes, and great birds. And there are the perfected saints, and the mountains are alive as well.
There are the seers, who are in effect superhuman and, in some cases, immortal. The seer Atri fathered Soma the moon god. Seers are commonly brahmin seers, descended from one of the seven mind-born sons of the god Brahmā (the seven stars of the Plough or Big Dipper). It is thanks to seers that the vital texts are known. As a result of their great austerities, seers possess the power to curse and bless. Some are vegetarians, some are teachers, some perform rituals, some subsist on forest fare, and some impose themselves upon the hospitality of kshatriyas. There are divine seers, and there are also royal seers—that is, particularly wise kings or former kings.
There are the Manus, the lords who preside over time. Time is organised into cycles, each of which consists of four long ages, the krita, tretā, dvāpara, and kali ages, each worse than the previous one. A cycle of these four is also called an ‘age’. And one thousand of those ages makes up a cosmic cycle, at the end of which the world is destroyed and subsists within Vishnu as potential energy until it is recreated again for the next cosmic cycle. One after another, fourteen Manus preside over the cosmic cycle, sharing the one thousand ages equally between them, each with his own particular set of seven seers, sons, and gods. At present, the Manu is Manu Vaivasvata, son of the sun, and the gods are those just briefly described.
There are the manifestations of Vishnu. The world is Vishnu’s, and Brahmā creates and governs it for him; but sometimes Vishnu’s intervention is required, typically to deal with a demon who has become arrogant after having his wishes granted. The thirty-first chapter of the Harivamsha lists nine of Vishnu’s manifestations, including two kshatriya manifestations, first as King Rāma, whose story is told in the Rāmāyana, and then as Krishna Vāsudeva. Krishna’s mission is partly shared, on the one hand, by the manifestations of numerous other gods and, on the other hand, by his brother Baladeva, manifestation of the cosmic snake Shesha, upon whom Vishnu reclines in the cosmic ocean. Together with the other manifesting gods, Krishna must effect a purge of the overly populous kshatriya class to relieve the pressure on the earth, and together with Baladeva, he must kill various demons born on earth in the region of Mathurā, principal among them Kamsa, Krishna’s first cousin once removed, who is the demon Kālanemi reborn.
Particularly salient in the Harivamsha is Vishnu’s female partner, who operates on several levels. On the cosmic level she is the primordial matrix consisting of three qualities, unmanifest when the cosmos is in abeyance, and manifest as all that is manifest—as the body through which the cosmic Vishnu is embodied—when the cosmos is in process (Hv 103.24–104.12 and 113.28–40). On the phenomenal level she is also Vishnu’s helpmate Sleep, who is instantiated in Vishnu’s sleep, in the rainy season, and in the destruction and abeyance of the universe, as well as in human sleep and death (Hv 40.7–34). And on the narrative level the specific activities that Sleep performs at Vishnu’s behest—including the act of being born herself—are instrumental in enabling him to be born safely as Krishna despite Kamsa’s attempts to have him killed. Thereafter she lives on, miraculously, as the wild and bloodthirsty goddess of the Vindhya Mountains (Hv 47–48), and as the woman Ekānamshā (Hv 96.11–19). On the narrative level she is also connected to the goddess Earth and to the great goddess Umā, married as wife to Shiva.
There are the other kshatriyas who constitute the network of Krishna Vāsudeva’s human relatives. Paternal lineages are particularly important to kshatriyas, and Krishna is a Yādava, a descendant of Yayāti’s son Yadu. The Yādava lineage is internally subdivided into sometimes overlapping groups of Andhakas, Bhojas, Dāshārhas, Hehayas, Kaishikas, Krathas, Kukuras, Mādhavas, and Vrishnis; the precise scope of these various terms is usually unclear, but Vrishni is the most common and seems sometimes to have an inclusive general sense, denoting Krishna’s local community. Genealogical details are given of most of the other kshatriya families that Krishna interacts with: they are his more-or-less distant relatives, descended from their common ancestor Yayāti, descendant of the moon. Polygyny is the norm, and is associated with typical forms of co-wife rivalry. Krishna and Baladeva’s father Vasudeva has seven wives, and Krishna goes on to have even more.
Amongst Krishna’s relatives there are, in particular, the Bhārata-Kurus, whose great tale is told in the Mahābhārata, of which the Harivamsha forms the final part. More specifically, Krishna and Baladeva’s paternal aunt, Prithā Kuntī, marries Pāndu and gives birth to the three eldest Pāndavas—Yudhishthira, Bhīmasena, and Arjuna; and Arjuna goes on to marry Krishna and Baladeva’s sister Subhadrā. The larger part of the Mahābhārata tells of the rivalry between the Pāndavas and their paternal cousins, the sons of Pāndu’s blind elder brother Dhritarāshtra, the acting king, and of how the Pāndavas eventually took the kingship of Hāstinapura from the senior line after the eighteen-day war on Kurukshetra, the Field of Kuru. Baladeva takes no part in the war (his maternal grandfather Bāhlika is linked to the Kuru line before the split), but Krishna serves as Arjuna’s charioteer and the Pāndavas’ tactical adviser, and is instrumental in their victory. The tale of
this rivalry, and of the war and its aftermath (and of Krishna), was put together by the brahmin seer Vyāsa and is told, several generations after the events it describes, to Arjuna’s direct descendant King Janamejaya, in the intervals of a snake-sacrifice ritual that he is holding to avenge the murder, by snakebite, of his father Parikshit.
The Harivamsha is the final part of the Mahābhārata, but it also serves in parallel as a companion to the story of the Bhārata-Kurus. It contains materials that may be of interest in connection with it and that may be consulted alongside it or separately. Because, in the first instance, the Harivamsha functions together with the larger part of the Mahābhārata, and because, accordingly, it tends not to repeat stories that have already been narrated there (and thus only contains part of Krishna’s biography), the following section of this introduction, ‘Krishna in the Pāndava Story’, provides an overview of the Mahābhāratastory as it is presented before the Harivamsha, with particular attention to the involvement of Krishna and the Yādava-Vrishnis. Readers who are already familiar with the larger part of the Mahābhārata may wish to skip this section.
Krishna in the Pāndava Story
The Mahābhārata (hereafter, in citations, Mbh) has eighteen books preceding the Harivamsha (Hv). At the beginning, the scene is set. The storyteller Ugrashravas will, at a ritual hosted by the brahmin Shaunaka, narrate to Shaunaka what he heard Vaishampāyana narrate to King Janamejaya at a snake-sacrifice ritual hosted by Janamejaya. But first the storyteller introduces King Janamejaya, and narrates the background and progress of his snake sacrifice, in which many snakes are destroyed but others spared on the condition that they behave themselves in future. At the ritual Janamejaya is told, by Vyāsa’s disciple Vaishampāyana, Vyāsa’s long tale about Janamejaya’s ancestors the Pāndavas. Vaishampāyana’s narration, as repeated by the storyteller to Shaunaka, begins at Mbh 1.55 and lasts (with brief exceptions) until Hv 113, and it helps persuade Janamejaya to make peace with the snakes.
After introducing Dhritarāshtra and Pāndu’s genitor Vyāsa and grandmother Satyavatī, Vaishampāyana provides the cosmic context in which a cull of kshatriyas is necessary for the good of the earth, and explains that many of the characters in the generations defined by the Kurukshetra war had secret divine identities, which are detailed at length. Vaishampāyana narrates Janamejaya’s ancestry, and then he describes how King Shantanu’s son Bhīshma renounced the throne and all women to enable his father to marry Satyavatī, and how Satyavatī’s sons subsequently died without issue, leading her to prevail upon her premarital son Vyāsa to save their lineage by impregnating their widows. However, as a result of her haste, Dhritarāshtra, Pāndu, and Vidura, the products of this scheme, are all compromised, being respectively blind, ‘pale’, and low-born, and the succession in the following generation is unclear.
The two sets of cousins begin to compete. The acting king Dhritarāshtra’s eldest son, Duryodhana, competes in particular with Bhīma Pāndava. Both are the same age, and both enormously strong. Duryodhana tries to have the Pāndavas killed, but they secretly escape, and for a while they live abroad disguised as brahmins. Then they contract an important marital alliance by (all five of them) marrying King Drupada’s daughter Draupadī in an exceptional, polyandrous marriage. It is after their triumphant appearance at Draupadī’s bridal festival that they first meet Krishna and Baladeva, who have come to the festival from Dvārakā as guests, and who subsequently send the Pāndavas valuable wedding gifts (Mbh 1.178.8–10, 180.17–22, 183.2–9, 191.13–19). Krishna’s dedication to the Pāndavas is discerned early on by Karna, who is Kuntī’s secret premarital son and Duryodhana’s best friend, as well as by Drupada (Mbh 1.194.15–16, 199.8–9). Dhritarāshtra partitions the kingdom and gives the Pāndavas the underdeveloped half, and they go there with Krishna and found the city of Indraprastha (1.199). While Arjuna is off travelling, he visits Krishna in Dvārakā, where despite Baladeva’s initial misgivings, Krishna helps Arjuna to marry their sister Subhadrā, and the couple return to Indraprastha escorted by Vrishnis bearing splendid gifts (1.210–13). When the rest of the Vrishnis return to Dvārakā, Krishna elects to remain behind for some time, and he is there when his nephew Abhimanyu is born (1.213.63–64). During this period he and Arjuna, while on an outing by the River Yamunā, burn down the Khāndava Forest as a service to the hungry god Agni. Indra resists them, but they receive weapons from Varuna—Arjuna receives the Gāndīva bow, Krishna the discus—and hold him off, destroying the forest and its inhabitants (1.214–25).
The Pāndavas prosper in Indraprastha, and Yudhishthira is prompted to consider hosting a grand rājasūya ritual to consolidate his position (2.11.43–73). He summons Krishna from Dvārakā for consultation, and Krishna tells Yudhishthira that he should first gain the support of the kshatriyas by killing King Jarāsandha of Magadha, who has imprisoned many other kings. Krishna explains that the Vrishnis relocated from Mathurā to Dvārakā as a result of Jarāsandha’s attacks (2.12–17). Krishna proposes that he, Bhīma, and Arjuna go to Jarāsandha’s palace and kill him; with Yudhishthira’s blessing they do this and free the imprisoned kings (2.18–22). This has the desired political effect, and in due course, under Vyāsa’s supervision, the guests are invited and Yudhishthira’s rājasūya takes place. But there is a fracas. The gift for the guest of honour is presented to Krishna, which displeases King Shishupāla of Chedi, who was closely allied to the late Jarāsandha and formerly betrothed to Krishna’s wife Rukminī. Protesting that Krishna is not a king, Shishupāla then ridicules him, and Krishna beheads Shishupāla with his discus.
After returning from the ritual, Duryodhana is troubled by his cousin’s popularity and wealth, and he prevails upon his indulgent father Dhritarāshtra to invite Yudhishthira to Hāstinapura for a game of dice, in which Dhritarāshtra’s brother-in-law Shakuni, an expert gambler, will defeat him. And so it comes to pass. During the fateful dicing match (at which Krishna is not present), Draupadī is manhandled and insulted by her cousins-in-law, and Yudhishthira loses the Pāndavas’ kingdom to Duryodhana for thirteen years, twelve years in exile and one year living in disguise.
During the Pāndavas’ years of exile, Krishna visits them three times, each time with a different group of Vrishnis (3.13–23, 118–20, 180–224). On all three occasions he promises the Pāndavas his future support. On the first occasion Krishna explains in detail why he was not able to attend or prevent the dicing match: King Shālva attacked Dvārakā in an attempt to avenge the death of Shishupāla. Krishna’s son Pradyumna distinguished himself in the battle, but Krishna had to pursue Shālva and kill him. On the third occasion Krishna visits the Pāndavas at the same time as the seer Mārkandeya, and Mārkandeya extols Krishna’s cosmic identity (3.186–87). Mārkandeya survives in the interim between one cosmic cycle and another, and he once witnessed Krishna the supreme being holding the cosmos within himself in potential form.
At the end of the Pāndavas’ year in disguise at the court of King Virāta, Virāta gives his daughter Uttarā to Arjuna, and Arjuna accepts her on behalf of his son Abhimanyu. Krishna arrives from Dvārakā with Abhimanyu (who has been staying there during the Pāndavas’ exile) and a party of gift-laden Vrishnis, and the wedding takes place (4.67). A council is held at which Krishna, Baladeva, and Sātyaki advise the Pāndavas on how to negotiate the return of their kingdom, and then the Vrishnis return to Dvārakā (5.1–5). Both sets of cousins expect war, and Arjuna and Duryodhana now travel separately to Dvārakā to try to enlist Krishna’s support. Krishna promises a large number of cowherd warriors to Duryodhana and his own services to Arjuna, but as a non-combatant. Both Duryodhana and Arjuna are happy with what they are promised (5.7). Of the Yādavas, Sātyaki will fight for Yudhishthira; Kritavarman will fight for Duryodhana; and Baladeva, whose loyalties are split, will not fight at all. Nor will Krishna’s brother-in-law Rukmin, whose assistance is offered, in condescending fashion, to both sides but is rejected (5.155).
Four envoys travel between the two
sides, ostensibly to try to broker a peace agreement. All are unsuccessful. Krishna is the third of them (5.70–129). By this time the family elders—Bhīshma, Dhritarāshtra, and the latter’s advisers Sanjaya and Vidura—are convinced of Krishna’s divinity and the impossibility of defeating Krishna and Arjuna in combination. At the end of his visit to Dhritarāshtra’s court, Krishna reveals his cosmic form, but Duryodhana is unable to see it (5.129.1–15). While in Hāstinapura Krishna also visits Vidura and Kuntī, and Krishna and Kuntī separately try to win Karna over to the Pāndava side by revealing his true parentage, without success (5.138–44).
The Mahābhārata’s account of the war begins with the Bhagavad-Gītā (6.23–40). When Arjuna surveys the warriors assembled against him, who include his relatives and teachers, he refuses to fight, saying that victory would not be worthwhile at such a cost. Krishna upbraids him for his lack of manliness, and then makes a series of philosophical arguments. He explains that death is inevitable, that one must do one’s specific class-duty regardless of personal feelings, and that if one does this in a yogic manner, without attachment to the fruits of one’s actions, as Krishna himself does, then no karma will result, and thus after death one might not be reborn but instead rejoin Krishna, to whom devotion is due. While explaining this in response to Arjuna’s questions, Krishna describes his own divine nature and also reveals his cosmic form to Arjuna, who is convinced and now agrees to fight.
Duryodhana’s army is led in turn by Bhīshma, by the Pāndavas’ martial-arts tutor Drona, by their unknown half-brother Karna, and by their uncle Shalya (the brother of Pāndu’s second wife Mādrī). Krishna helps and encourages the Pāndavas to defeat most of these leaders, and several other powerful antagonists, by dubious means. Bhīshma is defeated because he will not fight against a woman, and he considers Draupadī’s brother Shikhandin to be a woman because he was born female, so Arjuna places Shikhandin in front of him and attacks the non-combatant Bhīshma from that position (6.111–14). Bhīshma falls, but doesn’t yet die. Drona is killed when the Pāndavas trick him into thinking that his son Ashvatthāman is dead, and Draupadī’s brother Dhrishtadyumna beheads him while he is incapacitated with grief (7.164–65). Karna is attacked and killed while he is dealing with his chariot, which is stuck in the earth (8.66–67). Shalya is killed fairly, but by that time almost everyone else is dead too, including Abhimanyu and all ninety-nine of Duryodhana’s brothers.