Ideas

Sri Krishna - Vedic Avatar In The Age Of Puranas

Aravindan Neelakandan

Sep 02, 2018, 07:11 PM | Updated 07:11 PM IST

How the idea of Krishna in the Vedas became an avatar in later ages.

The worship of Sri Krishna as the avatar of Vishnu has a long tradition in India. During the colonial period, the colonial and evangelical Indologists seriously tried to attribute the popularity of Sri Krishna among Indian population to a corrupt form of Christian gospel. For them, the Krishna ‘cult’ was fabricated by Brahmins with evil intentions of stopping the spread of Christianity. Consider the following passage:

The introduction of the modern system (of chronology) was doubtless intended as a blow on Christianity, which, at the time, was making some progress in India; ... But the grandest blow of all, which was leveled by the Brahmins against Christianity, and the ne plus ultra of their schemes, was the invention of the avatars, or descents of the Deity, in various shapes and under various names, particularly that of Krishna; ... The fabrication of the incarnation and birth of Krishna, was most undoubtedly meant to answer a particular purpose of the Brahmins, who probably were sorely vexed at the progress Christianity was making, and fearing that, if not stopped in time, they would lose all their influence and emoluments.

‘A Historical View of the Hindu Astronomy’, 1825

This was by John Bentley in 1825 . Now consider the following quotation, from a book written a little more than 150 years after Binley:

The Vedic worship had become too rigid and inflexible, and Vedic sacrifices were too expensive to be revived again on a large scale; so the brahmanas seized upon the devotional cults of Vasudeva-Krsna and Sankarsana, and recognized these deities as forms of the orthodox divinity Narayana-Visnu to infuse brahmanical social ethics into these popular cults and re-establish their authority

‘The Origin and Development of Vaisnavism: Vaisnavism from 200 BC to AD 500’ (Munshiram Manoharlal, 1981)

The second one is from Marxist historian Suvira Jaiswal. The similarity between the two quotes is too striking to be ignored.

Bentley in true Christian spirit of Archbishop Ussher calculating the exact date and time of creation of the universe, also calculated the date of the birth of Krishna as ‘coincident with the 7th of August in the year of Our Lord 600’. The Christian bias led Bentley to draw scholarly conclusions that would make JNU scholars of this day proud, like Varahamihira was the contemporary of Akbar and that Bhaskaracharya’s time was after that of Akbar. Jaiswal like all Marxist historians colonised in their minds, is also animated by a deep Hinduphobia. As an expert witness for the Islamist side in the Ayodhya case, she ended up admitting that she was “giving statement on oath regarding Babri Mosque without any probe and not on the basis of my knowledge; rather I am giving the statement on the basis of my opinion”.

The discovery that the Heliodorus Column (second century BCE) dedicated to Vasudeva worship, with Garuda as his symbol, clearly demolished the idea of the Krishna ‘cult’ being derived from the Jesus cult that would emerge in distant Rome centuries later.

Still, the recycling of Krishna as a corrupt form of the Jesus story, continued with evangelical strategists doubling as Indological scholars. In 1907, missionary-’scholar’ Bernard Lucas considered the worship of Krishna as arising out of Christian influence and that ultimately India would have to choose between Krishna and Christ. Of course, for Lucas, the triumph of Jesus had been already determined. Though ‘Krishna derived from Jesus’ school was disproved, the idea that Krishna and his ‘avatarhood’ was the creation of scheming Brahmins to manipulate Indian masses, continues to this day as shown by the quote of the Marxist historian.

According to both the colonial schools, Marxism and evangelical Indology, disparate local and tribal deities simply got assimilated artificially into the Vedic Vishnu by scheming Brahmins. Even well-meaning Indic scholars like Radhakrishnan seemed to have fallen into this trap. However, a deeper study points out that it is not so.

Indologist Prof Benjamin Preciado-Solis in his detailed study points out to 'gratuitous presuppositions … contributed by Suvira Jaiswal herself’ in creating a divide between a non-Aryan Krishna and the Vedic deities. (Prof Preciado-Solis himself believes in Aryan invasion theory.) The conclusion of the Mexican Indologist in his study of the Vedic antecedents of Krishna shows a deeper connectivity and continuity between the Vedic spiritual realm and avataric Krishna:

As a conclusion we can say that, although the figure of Krishna does not appear in the hymns of the Vedas, very important traits later associated with him are conspicuously present there. Vishnu and Narayana both share with Krishna essential features in their personalities. In our brief outline of those two gods’ characters we can discern a basic similarity, a fundamental relation, that connects them with the Puranic hero. Since Krishna is supposed to be a terrestrial manifestation of that divine being - Vishnu and Narayana combined - this agreement in their character is quite natural. The Krishna figure is associated with Vishnu due to the ‘expansive’ character of the latter. Let us remember Vishnu’s description as a young boy with a giant body ie has grown, has developed, which connects him with the Purusa that grows out of the Golden Germ. We have also the myth of the Brahmanas where Vishnu is described as a dwarf who grows incommensurably, and we have also his epithets in the Rig Veda: urukrama and urugaya, ‘the one of wide steps’. Everything indicates a symbol of universal expansion out of an infinitely small centre. ... This image of the cosmic child is in our opinion a fundamental trait in the Vaishnava mythology that connects at the roots the figure of Krishna with those of his two Vedic predecessors, Vishnu and Narayana: these two in turn were combined in a single character largely because of this same trait.

Krishna Cycle in the Puranas (Motilal Banarsidas, 1984)

This conclusion of Prof Preciado-Solis is prefigured and well presented in the Tamil epic Silapadikaram (3rd century CE), where the cosmic nature of the Vedic deity and the avataric- ‘folk-loric’ nature of Krishna are repeatedly shown as the fundamental mystery of maya. Incidentally, in Tamil tradition, Krishna is associated with the name ‘Mayoon’.

With the Northern Mountain as churn-rod
And the Vasuki serpent as churn-rope
Ocean-hued One churned the very ocean womb;
Those very hands that churned the ocean cosmic
Are the same hands that Yasoda tied with ropes domestic
Oh One with lotus (of creation) emerging from the navel
The paradox of (your) Maya is indeed beyond comprehension

Even as gods venerate the very essence of all as He,
Having no hunger, You devour all the worlds
The same mouth that consumes all the worlds,
Steals and eats the butter of the cowherds
Oh You who wears the garland of holy basil
The paradox of (your) Maya is indeed beyond comprehension

Devas gather in large groups to venerate Your feet
With your two strides you removed
The three worlds from the dark chaos
With the same feet You walked on this land
As emissary of peace for Pandavas
Oh You who took the form of the Lion ferocious
The paradox of (your) Maya is indeed beyond comprehension

Similarly. the Vasudeva (to whom Heliodorous Column was dedicated) was also not a separate ‘deity’ that was later ‘seized upon’ by scheming Brahmins. Dr K R van Kooij, professor of South Asian art history at Leiden University points out that the column “has the same symbolic content as the Vedic sacrificial post' as it expresses the 'cosmic totality' of the three parts 'symbolic of earth, intermediate space and heaven, the whole expressing the idea of heavenly ascension'. He further states that this column presented 'an aniconic symbol of Vasudeva, who as the supreme deity, impersonates cosmic totality":

Vasudeva is present in the three cosmic level of earth, intermediate space and heaven, and at the same time he encompasses the whole. A short inscription, which was engraved on the other side of the shaft, confirms this interpretation in a remarkable way: ‘Three steps of immortality, when accomplished, lead into heaven: self-control, resigning worldly life and prudence’. Here, cosmic ascension has been converted into a spiritual one.

‘The concept of cosmic totality in the ancient art of India’ in ‘Approaches to Iconology’, Vol 4-5, Brill, 1986 pp.34-45

The three layered worldview needless to say is essentially a vedic one.

In ancient Tamil Sangam literature too, one finds the Krishna-Vishnu-Vedic continuity aesthetically well expressed at different levels. Far from suggesting any antipathy to Vedas, we see the ancient Tamil literature (3rd century CE) describing Garuda-mounted form of Vishnu as the very form of the vedic yagna:

You who have as your mast the fiery Garuda
The Vedic chant becomes your form
You have as your food the animal tied to the ritual mast
With musical chanting of Brahmins and
Through proper means as the fire increases,
It is You who manifests there.
Witnessing this even deniars, experience You. (Paripadal 2:60-68)

Tamil literature reinforces conceptually and aesthetically the vedic nature of Vishnu, which is his expansiveness and its extension into the local manifestation of the avatar. They also have another fundamental vedic tenet that the colonial and Marxist historians are at a loss to comprehend. Their tools have epistemological inadequacy and deficiency. They fail to realise that the vedic vision sees in all diverse expressions of nature the one underlying fundamental reality - which in Vaishnavaite spiritual stream is personified in Krishna.

With flame like sprouts and shade giving branches
Stand the banyan and the Kadampa trees
You have your abode;
In the lonely mountain tops with no movement of wind even
In the islets in the middle of running rivers
Your presence abides;
In different places You reside
Names differ, yet they all call You;
You fulfill the wishes of the folded hands;
You are the servant of Your devotees;
You are the protector of their deeds virtuous. (Paripadal 4:66-73

Note that the verses link the so-called nature worship with the presence of Vishnu and echoes the very famous ‘Ekam Sat Vibra Bahuta Vathanthi’. Neither the Brahmins nor the Sangam Tamil bards ‘seized’ the nature worship and appropriated it into ‘Aryan Vishnu’ worship. The poem mentions the divine as the servant of his devotee. Almost 1,700 years after, Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi wrote a complete poetry in which he visualised Krishna as a faithful servant.

So beyond the partial and faulty frameworks of Marxism and colonialism, India needs fresh approaches to discover her own treasures. The truth is the vedic matrix has an extraordinary ability to resonate with and nurture the theo-diversity of this land. Sri Krishna simply embodies in him that perfection of the vedic culture. Perhaps, the best, holistic appraisal of the emergence of Sri Krishna as avataric phenomenon in Indian culture and history comes from Sri Aurobindo.

The historical Krishna, no doubt, existed. We meet the name first in the Chhandogya Upanishad where all we can gather about him is that he was well known in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman, so well known indeed in his personality and the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of Devaki for all to understand who was meant. We know too that Krishna and Arjuna were the object of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries; and there is some reason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and philosophical tradition from which the Gita may have gathered many of its elements and even the foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion and works, and perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or at the least one of the early teachers of this school. In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical character and the Avatar; his worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been well established by the time — apparently from the fifth to the first centuries B.C. — when the old story and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form.

Essays on the Gita, 1922.

Aravindan is a contributing editor at Swarajya.