Once again, I'm struck by how much Krishna resembles a hero rather than a god. There's the enumeration of the challenges set for him, much like the testing of heroes in other tales. He's also able to be cursed by a mortal, his family doomed to self-destruction the same as any non-divine group found in the epics.
The motif of the bow pops up again! Rama breaks the bow in The Ramayana, Arjuna in The Mahabharata, and even the divine Krishna in Nivedita's tale! It reminds me of the sword in the stone found in Arthurian legend, and I wonder how often this kind of test occurs for culture heroes in world epics.
Where Krishna does seem to differ from other culture heroes, however, is his view on life and fate. Unlike Kansa and other characters in the epics, Krishna never tries to avert his fate. Instead, he encourages others to go along with whatever life is supposed to bring them, as expressed in his conversation with Arjuna that becomes the Bhagavad Gita. Perhaps this is one way that he is characterized as a god rather than simply a mortal hero?
Krishna reveals his universal form as revealed to Arjuna
statue in Singapore (Wikipedia)
For storytelling this week: I find New Religious Movements and revitalization movements fascinating, and it occurred to me that Krishna's rise to influence and replacement of Indra in the tales I read this week can perhaps be matched with Anthony F.C. Wallace's stages of revitalization. Anyway, I thought telling of his ascendancy through the eyes of a devotee and according to the religious movement model might be interesting. I find it particularly interesting that Krishna never returns to Brindaban, but that his "peasant friends" make a pilgrimage to see him at the harvest sacrifice
And an interesting sidenote: on page 230, Nivedita uses "kine" to refer to cows, which is a very antiquated term drawn from Old English originally -- does this have anything to do with her dialect of English?
Hi Susanna, you always mention such fascinating details in your posts and I just wanted to chime in about kine: it could be a Biblical echo, but it's worth noting also that Sister Nivedita was Irish; I don't know if "kine" persisted in the English spoken in Ireland longer than in England itself...? Anyway, you can read about her here; she was an amazing woman: Sister Nivedita, from Ireland to India!
ReplyDelete