KRISHNA, written Krishn, Kistna, and Kisn, is familiarly known to the Hindus as Kaniya, and also called Heri. He was a prince of the Yadu tribe, and lived towards the closing centuries of the Brazen Age, calculated to have ended about B.C. 1200 to 1100, and he has since been deified by the Hindu people of India. Who his parents were, is doubtful. Vasudeva, a chief of the Yadava, and brother of Kunti, the wife of Panda, and Devaki, a damsel of the royal family of the Moja reigning at Mathura, are claimed ; and Nanda and Yasoda, cowherds dwelling at Gokula, are indicated as his ostensible parents. Krishna is the greatest favourite with the Hindus of all their divinities. Of the sectaries who revere Vishnu to the of the other gods, one sect almost confine their worship to Rama ; but though composed of an i*portant class, as in cluding many of the asceties, and some of the boldest speculators in religious inquiry, its num bers and popularity bear nd proportion to a division of the Vaishnava sect which is attached to the worship of Krishna, and the legends told of him are innumerable. When Aurangzeb pro scribed the idol of Kaniya, and rendered his shrines impure throughout Vrij, Rana Raj Singh offered the heads of one hundred thousand Rajpnts for his service, and the god was conducted by the route of Kotah and Rampura to Mewar._ One sect worships Krishna as Paramatma or supreme spirit, prior to all worlds, and both the cause and substance of creation. With them, in his capacity of creator, preserver, and destroyer, he is Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva ; and in the endless divisions of his substance or energy, he is all that ever was and will be. Besides these manifestations of himself, he has for various purposes assumed specific shapes, as avatars or incarnations, Ansa or portions, Ansana or portions of portions, and so on ad infinitum. Professor Lassen regards him as identical with Herakles of Megasthenes.
Since the middle of the 19th century, several learned men have formed the opinion that some of the legends relating to Krishna have been taken from the life of Jesus Christ. Major Cunning ham believes that the worship of Krishna is only a corrupt mixture of Buddhism and Christianity, and was a sort of compromise intended for the subversion of both religions in India. Several of the legends in the Mahabharata seem to have been written after the birth of Christ, whose miracles have been copied ; and Krishna is made to straighten the crooked woman Kubja, which resembles the miracle of raising the bowed down woman. Weber (Krishna Geburts fest, p. 316,
English ed. p. 71) thinks that Krishna's sectarian worship as the one God probably attained its perfection through the influence of Christianity.
The name of Krishna occurs in the Rig Veda, but without any relation to the great deity of later and modern times. He appears prominently in the Mahabharata ; and as a divine being he delivered to Arjuna the Bhagavat Gita, which is recognised as part of the great epic, in it distinctly declaring himself to be the Supreme.
The divine character was still further developed in the Harivansa, a later addition to the Maha bliarata. In the Atmaprabodha and Narayana and Chandogyopanishads, Krishna is mentioned as a pious sage. It is in the Gopalatipaniyopanishad that he is declared divine ; and in the Puranas, especially in the Bhagavat Purana, this attained its full expansion, Krishna being there described in his complete apotheosis, and in that he is repre sented as the eighth avatar of Vishnu.
All the stories told in the Bhagavat Purana, of his childhood and boyhood, and the love scenes of his youth, have been made popular in the Hindi translation called Prem Sagas', or Ocean of Love, and other versions. Much of the story of the early days of Krishna is of comparatively modern invention. The incidents of his relations with the Pandava princes are the most ancient.
Krishna lived during a period of religious changes, and he was able to induce the Yadava to discontinue the worship of Indra, and worship the cows that supported them. The disturbance re sulting from this is denoted by the legend that Indra opened the heavens to deluge the race, but Krishna protected them by elevating the Govar dhana, mountain as an umbrella, which implies that he took shelter on that mountain. He migrated from Mathura to Gujerat, and built or fortified Dwaraka. But the religious contest continued, as shown by Krishna, while a guest or on a visit to Indra's heaven, stealing the Puri-jatzt tree from buira's garden; and when Usha, daughter of Bann, carried off Aniruddlut, Krishna's grand son, Krishna defeated liana, though aided by Siva and his son Skanda.