Soon Krishna and Baladeva travel to Sāndīpani’s boarding school in Avanti. They graduate in martial arts, and by way of paying a tuition fee Krishna finds, revives, and returns their guru’s long-lost son (Hv 79). Then King Jarāsandha attacks Mathurā to avenge Kamsa, whose widows are his own daughters. And supported by a massive conglomerate of armies, Jarāsandha keeps on attacking Mathurā. Krishna and Baladeva fight bravely against the attackers. At one point, while Baladeva is fighting against Jarāsandha, a voice from the sky says that Baladeva must stop fighting Jarāsandha because Jarāsandha is destined to die soon some other way (Bhīma Pāndava kills him, Mbh 2.22). The Yādavas are outnumbered and can barely resist the repeated attacks, and when Kālayavana and a host of other barbarian chieftains join Jarāsandha’s force, Krishna and the Yādavas abandon Mathurā and travel west (Hv 84). After returning inland briefly to dispose of Kālayavana (and Jarāsandha), Krishna now arranges the building of the new city of Dvārakā by the sea, a miraculous and memorable city as splendid as Amarāvatī, the heavenly city of Indra. Dvārakā is described in detail at its founding (Hv 86) and also, on a later occasion, from the air, when Krishna returns from an adventure riding on Garuda the eagle (Hv 93–94).
In his mature period Krishna lives in Dvārakā, travelling frequently elsewhere to visit relatives or accomplish specific tasks. The text presents one list of Balarāma’s deeds (Hv 90) and two lists of Krishna’s (Hv 96–97, 105), and some of these deeds are not narrated in the Harivamsha or anywhere else in the Mahābhārata. Those that are narrated in the Harivamsha primarily have to do with Krishna’s family matters.
Jarāsandha’s protégé is Krishna’s cousin Shishupāla. Jarāsandha arranges for Shishupāla’s engagement to Bhīshmaka’s daughter Rukminī, and many Yādavas travel south for the wedding. Bhīshmaka and his people are Yādavas too, living in Vidarbha, beyond the Vindhya Mountains and the River Narmadā. But Rukminī prefers Krishna, and the day before the wedding Krishna sees her, grabs her, gets her onto his chariot, and races off towards Dvārakā, while Baladeva and company hold off pursuers. Shishupāla hates Krishna anyway (and is eventually beheaded by his discus, Mbh 2.42), and the deed is a success. Rukminī becomes the first of Krishna’s many wives, the mother of Pradyumna (who also marries a woman from Bhīshmaka’s family), the grandmother of Aniruddha (who does so too), and the great-grandmother of Vajra. But at Aniruddha’s wedding there is a dicing match, and a fight in which Baladeva kills Rukminī’s brother Rukmin (Hv 89).
At Indra’s request, Krishna leaves Dvārakā, riding on Garuda, on a mission to kill the demon Naraka Bhauma, who has stolen the goddess Aditi’s earrings. Naraka is a particularly nasty demon who has been hoarding treasure and women, but Krishna soon kills him and his accomplices (Naraka subsequently possesses Karna, Mbh 3.240.19, 32). Krishna then delivers the earrings back to Aditi in heaven, and the rest of Naraka’s hoard back to Dvārakā. The Vrishnis are rich.
The events that are narrated concerning Krishna’s son Pradyumna and grandson Aniruddha emphasise the brahminical desire for sons to be retained through a tradition of patrilocal marriage. Pradyumna is kidnapped as a baby and adopted by a demon couple, but when he grows older the demon woman falls in love with him and tells him the truth; he then kills her husband, brings her back to Dvārakā, and marries her (Hv 99). A similar story soon follows (as told by Arjuna to Yudhishthira) in which a brahmin’s infant sons are kidnapped but Krishna manages to bring them back (Hv 101–04). Then, as the culmination of the Book of Vishnu, the fabulous and well-paced story of Aniruddha is told in detail (Hv 106–13). The demon Bāna’s daughter Ushā has a sexual dream featuring Aniruddha, and then manages to find him, bring him to her father’s house, and keep him there as her secret lover. Bāna discovers Aniruddha and imprisons him, but eventually Krishna, Baladeva, and Pradyumna arrive on Garuda, defeat Bāna and his allies, including the god Shiva, and take the couple back to Dvārakā.
The Harivamsha does not relate the end of the story of Krishna, the Vrishnis, and Dvārakā, since it has been covered earlier in the Mahābhārata. The Book of Vishnu ends with the completion of Janamejaya’s snake sacrifice and the end of his dialogue with Vaishampāyana. In the short final book, the Book of the Future (Hv 114–18), the storyteller Ugrashravas tells Shaunaka the final instalments of the story of Janamejaya. Like Yudhishthira before him, Janamejaya resolves to perform a horse sacrifice. Vyāsa visits him, and after they have talked briefly about the story of the Pāndavas and Vyāsa has made some predictions about Janamejaya’s future, Vyāsa describes at some length the eventual end of the unpleasant kali age, after which time will turn and the spotless krita age will come round again. Some time after this conversation, King Janamejaya’s horse sacrifice takes place, but because of Indra’s cunning intervention, it leads to trouble between Janamejaya and his priests and between Janamejaya and his wife. However, Janamejaya makes peace with his wife and rules his kingdom well, nourished by Vyāsa’s teachings, and the Harivamsha ends on a high note.
The Text and the Translation
This translation is of the Harivamsha as it was critically reconstituted by P. L. Vaidya and published in 1969.4 Vaidya’s version of 6073 verses in 118 chapters is the shortest available version, since it consists only of the passages that are found in all of the regional manuscript versions. It also purports to approximate a version that was earlier than any of those versions. The surviving manuscripts date from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, but Vaidya’s reconstituted version can be placed in the first millennium ce.
The translation includes a lot of Sanskrit names. If the meaning of the name is interesting or important, a translation is sometimes given alongside it, with initial capitals. The whole translation is intended to be read out loud, and so measures have been taken to encourage the correct pronunciation of the Sanskrit names.
Pronunciation. Long vowels are printed with a macron to differentiate them from their shorter counterparts. Thus a is as in cup, ā as in carp; i is as in click, ī as in clique; u is as in crook, ū as in crude. The other two basic vowels are always long: e is as in hey, not hem, and o is as in broke, not bog. Some consonants have aspirated counterparts: thus bh is as in dab-hand, chh as in coach-house, dh as in road-hog, gh as in dog-house, kh as in back-hand, and so forth. The English sounds f as in scarf and th as in thick do not occur; ph is always as in cup-handle, th as in coat-hook.
Many of the characters in the Harivamsha are known by several different names. In the translation the rarer names are often supplemented with a more common name, but where several names are common they are simply used as they occur in the Sanskrit. In context, it is almost always clear who is who; the index can and should be used to dispel confusion at any point, but please note here, in advance, that Krishna the Dark One is also called Hari the Yellow, Hrishīkesha the Lord of the Senses, Janārdana the Exciter, Keshava the One with the Hair, Madhusūdana the Slayer of Madhu, Vāsudeva the Son of Vasudeva, and Vishvaksena whose Armies are Everywhere; that Baladeva the Strong God is also called Bala the Strong, Halāyudha Plough-as-his-Weapon, Rāma the Handsome, and (particularly when he is young) Sankarshana the Extraction; that Krishna and Baladeva’s father Vasudeva is also called Ānakadundubhi the Drums; that Sātyaki is also called Yuyudhāna; that Arjuna Pāndava is also called Dhananjaya the Winner of Wealth; that the Pāndavas’ mother Kuntī is also called Prithā; that Dvārakā the City of the Gates is also called Dvāravatī and Kushasthalī; that Vivasvat the sun is also called Mārtanda Dead-Egg; that Indra is also called Maghavat the Bountiful, the Punisher of Pāka (demon of drought), Shakra the Mighty, Shatakratu the God of a Hundred Rites, and Vāsava of the Vasus; that the great god Shiva the Auspicious is also called Bhava, Hara the Remover, Maheshvara the Great Lord, Rudra the Howler, Shankara the Beneficent, and Tryambaka the Three-Eyed; that Shiva’s son Skanda the Attacker is also called Guha the Hidden, Kārttikeya the Son of the Krittikās, and Kumāra the Prince; that Shiva’s wife Umā is also called Pārvatī the Daugh
ter of the Mountain; that the great god Vishnu is also called Nārāyana whose Recourse was the Waters, and Vaikuntha, and by several names—Hari, Hrishīkesha, Madhusūdana—that are also names of Krishna; and that Shesha the Remainder, the integral divine snake upon whom Vishnu reclines, is also called Ananta the Endless.
Aside from names, the translation includes some other words that are either untranslated from the Sanskrit or are words derived from Indian languages. These include the textual genres Veda and Shāstra; the title of the cosmic overseers (Manus); the names of the four cosmic ages (krita, tretā, dvāpara, and kali, in descending order of sobriety); the names of the four social classes (brahmins are teachers, advisers, and ritual specialists; kshatriyas are warrior-aristocrats; vaishyas are farmers and traders; and shūdras are labourers); the calls that are made to accompany ritual offerings into the fire (svāhā for offerings to the gods, svadhā for offerings to the ancestors, and vashat more generally); a type of ladle used for making offerings (darvī); a ritual chant (brihat), a ritual ceremony (ukthya), a particularly assertive royal ritual (rājasūya), and the sacred ritual drink (soma); the auspicious visual sign (swastika); three types of land grass (darbha, kans, and kusha); a species of deer (ruru); a measure of distance (the yojana, somewhere between two and thirteen miles); two musical instruments (mridanga, a kind of drum, and vīnā, a plucked and strummed string instrument); a type of philosophy (sānkhya, premised on the mental apprehension of the essential constituents of the universe); the curl of hair on Vishnu’s chest (shrīvatsa); the names of various trees (arjuna, danti, kadam, meyna, poon, sal, srimara, svarnaka, and talipot); and some other words that have now effectively passed into English (ashram, the retreat-cum-college of a sage; brahman, the unconditioned absolute; guru, an esteemed teacher; karma, the conditioning residue of acts; and yoga, the discipline of the mind—this is not to be understood as a merely physical regime—and yogi, a practitioner of yoga).
I will publish online an open-access paper entitled ‘Translating Vaidya’s Harivamsha’, which discusses in detail the edition translated, the minor emendations made (at 13.52, 15.44, 24.14, 28.44, and 89.7), and the translation and annotation strategies adopted. I have tried to keep the tone of the translation conversational, but also as serious as befits a sacred text. The Harivamsha is, in my opinion, a classic of world literature, but at the same time, it is evidently intended to encourage love for Vishnu and for his manifestation as Krishna. It has been an unalloyed pleasure and honour for me to translate this text, and despite this translation’s no doubt numerous defects—for which I apologise—I hope that it is accurate and accessible enough to benefit as many readers as possible, in as many ways as possible. According to the text, its benefits to the reader are liable to include not just entertainment and edification, but also unexpectedly far-reaching economic, existential, and spiritual benefits.
Further Reading
Bryant, Edwin F., trans. 2013. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. New York: North Point Press.
Buitenen, J. A. B. van, and James L. Fitzgerald, trans. 1973–2004. The Mahābhārata, vols 1–3 and 7 (books 1–5 and 11–12a). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Couture, André. 2015–17. Krishna in the Harivaṁśa. 2 vols. Delhi: D. K. Printworld.
Debroy, Bibek, trans. 2010–14. The Mahabharata. 10 vols. Gurgaon: Penguin.
Doniger, Wendy, trans. 2004. Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin.
Doniger, Wendy, and Sudhir Kakar, trans. 2009. The Kamasutra of Vatsyayana. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Doniger O’Flaherty, Wendy, ed. 1988. Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Ganguli, Kisari Mohan, trans. 2000. The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa. 4 vols. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.
Goldman, Robert P., Sheldon I. Pollock, Rosalind Lefeber, Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, and Barend A. van Nooten, trans. 1984–2016. The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India. 7 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Johnson, W. J., trans. 2008. The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahābhārata: The Massacre at Night. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, W. J., trans. 2009. The Bhagavad Gita. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, W. J. 2010. A Dictionary of Hinduism. Oxford Paperback Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mitchiner, John E., trans. 2002. The Yuga Purāṇa. Kolkata: Asiatic Society.
Olivelle, Patrick, trans. 2009. The Law Code of Manu. Oxford World’s Classics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Olivelle, Patrick, trans. 2016. King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India: Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra. New York: Oxford University Press.
Roebuck, Valerie J., trans. 2004. The Upaniṣads. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin.
Roebuck, Valerie J., trans. 2010. The Dhammapada. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin.
Satyamurti, Carole. 2016. Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling. New York: W. W. Norton.
Smith, John D., trans. 2009. The Mahābhārata: An Abridged Translation. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin.
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1 Tracy Coleman, ‘Dharma, Yoga, and Viraha-Bhakti in Buddhacarita and Kṛṣṇacarita’, in Emmanuel Francis and Charlotte Schmid, eds., The Archaeology of Bhakti I: Mathurā and Maturai, Back and Forth (Pondicherry: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2014), pp. 31–61.
2 André Couture, Krishna in the Harivaṁśa, vol. 1: The Wonderful Play of a Cosmic Child (Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2015), pp. 236–59.
3 Hemchandra Raychaudhuri, Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1920), pp. 85–92.
4 Parashuram Lakshman Vaidya, ed., The Harivaṁśa, Being the Khila or Supplement to the Mahābhārata, for the First Time Critically Edited, vol. 1 (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1969).
Map
The Book of Krishna’s Lineage
Creation and Cosmology
1. The First Creation
1 Shaunaka said:
Son of a storyteller, you’ve told a great long tale, about all the Bhāratas, and also about other kings, 2 as well as gods, Dānavas, light-elves, snakes, monsters, Daityas, perfected saints, and trolls. 3 You’ve told of extremely wonderful deeds, brave men, ethical positions, amazing discussions, and a people so superb they’ve never been bettered. 4 The old holy story, which you’ve narrated in refined language, is like nectar. It’s good for the ears and mind, and I love it.
5 In it, son of Lomaharshana, you’ve certainly spoken about the Kuru people, but you haven’t said much about the Vrishnis and Andhakas. So that’s what you must tell me now.
6 The storyteller said:
I’ll narrate the Vrishni lineage for you, from the beginning. For that’s what Janamejaya requested from the disciple of wise Vyāsa. 7 After hearing the whole history of the Bhāratas, Janamejaya Bhārata, who was a very intelligent man, said to Vaishampāyana:
8 Brahmin. You’ve narrated, and I’ve heard in detail, a great Bhārata tale, rich in import and detail. 9 Many of the valiant bulls of men who were mentioned there by their names and deeds were great warriors of the Vrishnis and Andhakas. 10 Here and there, great brahmin, you’ve told of their dazzling deeds, in brief and also in detail, my lord. 11 But in that regard, I’m not yet satisfied by the old tale that you’re telling, for as yet I think of the Vrishnis and the Pāndavas as a single group. 12 You know their lineage as a direct witness, so tell of their family in detail, great ascetic. 13 I want to know about each of them—who was who, and who was in whose lineage—and I want to know their amazing ancient origins, as far back as the patriarch.
14 The storyteller said:
The great ascetic paid his respects, and then, since he’d been asked for it, the great man told that tale, in sequence and in detail.
15 Vaishampāyana said:
While I’m re
lating it, pay attention to the divine tale, your majesty. It’s wholesome, destructive of evil, marvellous, rich in import, and equal to the Veda, 16 and whoever pays heed to it, my boy, or hears it repeatedly, preserves their own lineage and is glorified in heaven.
17 The unmanifest cause is eternal, and it contains the existent and the non-existent. From it the lord created the universal primary cosmic person.*18 Be aware, your majesty, that he is Brahmā of infinite vigour, the creator of all beings, and that he’s dedicated to Nārāyana. 19 From the great one came the ego, and from the ego came the elements, and from the elements came the different kinds of beings. That’s the eternal creation.
20 Listen as I narrate also the procreation of beings, which is known and heard as a text of many parts. It strengthens the reputation of the forebears, 21 it’s blessed, famous, and heavenly, it destroys enemies and extends lifespans, and it mentions all those who have acted virtuously and whose reputation is secure. 22 For a healthy and honest person like you, it’s the source of everything healthy and honest. I’ll narrate the superb procreation of beings for you, right down to the Vrishni lineage.
23 Self-born Lord Vishnu wanted to produce various creatures. So he first emitted the waters, and then he ejaculated into them. 24 The waters are called Nārā. According to the Veda, that was their original name. In the beginning, they were his recourse (ayana), and that’s how you remember the name Nārāyana.
Krishna's Lineage Page 4