"No individual character like Krishna or Rama can be found through archaeology," said Prof. B.D. Chatopadhyay of the Centre for Historical Studies at JNU. "Archaeology can reconstruct the material culture of a people. Krishna is known from legends, epics and puranas. Interpolating archaeology with literature is fraught with difficulties. The efforts of some historians and archaeologists to correlate textual evidence with archaeological finds have not found a consensus even among themselves, and serious archaeologists are questioning the exercise."

 http://www.mahabharataonline.com/articles/mahabharata_article.php?id=32

Kanha occurs in several places in the Pali traditions including:
1. Kanha.-A name for Māra. E.g., Sn.v.355; M.i.377; D.ii.262; Thag.v.1189.
2. Kanha.-The name of the Bodhisatta; he was born in a brahmin family and later became a sage. He is also called Kanha-tāpasa, and is mentioned among those the memory of whose lives caused the Buddha to smile. See Kanha Jātaka (2). DhsA.294, 426.
3. Kanha.-Another name of Vāsudeva (J.iv.84, 86; vi.421; PvA.94ff ); the scholiast explains that he belonged to the Kanhāyanagotta.
4. Kanha.-Son of Disā, a slave girl of Okkāka. He was called Kanha because he was black and, like a devil (kanha), spoke as soon as he was born. He was the ancestor of the Kanhāyanagotta (D.i.93). Later he went into the Dekkhan and, having learnt mystic verses, became a mighty seer. Coming back to Okkāka, Kanha demanded the hand of the king's daughter Maddarūpī. At first the request was indignantly refused, but when Kanha displayed his supernatural powers he gained the princess. D.i.96f.; DA.i.266.
5. Kanha.-A Pacceka Buddha, mentioned in the Isigili Sutta. M.iii.71.
6. Kanha.-A dog. See Mahā-Kanha
7. Kanha.-See Kanhadīpāyana
It is certain that those names were very common by that time.

Jatakas are fables and stories like the Aesops fables with talking animals and birds a technique used by early civilizations. The Buddha himself used jataka stories to explain concepts like kamma and rebirth and to emphasise the importance of certain moral values.  Story tellers made their stories as required.  A Jataka bhanaka (jataka storyteller) is mentioned to have been appointed even as early as the time of the Buddha. Such appointments were common in ancient Sri Lanka and among others, King Llanaga (1^st century AD) is recorded in the mahavamsa, to have heard kapi jataka from a bhanaka bhikkhu.

In the Buddhist cult this  developed into an art after the development of Mahayana Buddhism when theistic elements were introduced into Buddhism.   Sihala literature gives us a storehouse of Buddhist jataka stories.Among them are Sasadavata (12^th century), Muvadevdavata (12^th century), Kausilumina (13^th century), Guttila kavyaya and Kavyashekharaya (14^th century), Kusa jataka kavyaya and Asadisa da Kava (17^th century), Sulu Kalingu da vata (12 century), Ummagga Jataka (13^th century), Bhuridatta Jataka (13^th century) and Vessantara Jataka are jataka stories re-told in inimitable fashion. Other works such as Amavatura (12^th century),Butsarana (12 century) Pajavalia (13^th century) which all probably can trace some form of origin from Pali Jatakas of Buddha.  Being fables they are not supposed to be taken as history.

Stories similar to jataka stories occur in the Vedas. Some of the Brahmanas and Puranas are simply narrative stories. In many places, the context, the style or the core stories are altered.

In Mahayana literature Asvaghos’s Sutralankara, Aryashura’s Jatakamala and Khsemendra’s Avadana Kalpalata are well known as jataka stories.

Indian Sanskrt works such as Katha sarit sagara, Dasa Kuamara carita, Panca tantra and Hitopadesa contain similar stories. These stories contributed to the later incomparable works of Kalidasa and Ashvaghosa.

There are also Mahayana jataka stories such as Vyaghri, Dhammasondaka and Seta Gandha Hasti which do not appear in Pali at all. Some jataka stories can be found in Jain literature, such as the story of Isisinga in Suyakadanga, which is the Nalini Jataka. They are found in even the Mahabharata, for example Rsissringa upakhyana.
( See http://www.buddhanet.net/bt_intro.htm)
Kurunegoda Piyatissa
Buddhist Literature Society Inc
New York Buddhist Vihara
 

The legend of Krishna (Eliot)

 The legend represents him as the son of Vasudeva, who belonged to the Sâttvata seCt of the Yâdava tribe, and of his wife Devakî. It had been predicted to Kaṃsa, king of Mathura (Muttra), that one of her sons would kill him. He therefore slew her first six children: the seventh, Balarâma, who is often counted as an incarnation of Vishṇu, was transferred by divine intervention to the womb of Rohinî. Kṛishṇa, the eighth, escaped by more natural methods. His father was able to give him into the charge of Nanda, a herdsman, and his wife Yâsodâ who brought him up at Gokula and Vrindâvana. Here his youth was passed in sporting with the Gopîs or milk-maids, of whom he is said to have married a thousand. He had time, however, to perform acts of heroism, and after killing Kaṃsa, he transported the inhabitants of Mathura to the city of Dvârakâ which he had built on the coast of Gujarat.

He became king of the Yâdavas and continued his mission of clearing the earth of tyrants and monsters. In the struggle between the Pâṇḍavas and the sons of Dhṛitarâshtṛa he championed the cause of the former, and after the conclusion of the war retired to Dvârakâ. Internecine conflict broke out among the Yâdavas and annihilated the race. Kṛishṇa himself withdrew to the forest and was killed by a hunter called Jaras (old age) who shot him supposing him to be a deer.

In the Mahâbhârata and several Purâṇas this bare outline is distended with a plethora of miraculous incident remarkable even in Indian literature, and almost all possible forms of divine and human activity are attributed to this many-sided figure.

 We may indeed suspect that his personality is dual even in the simplest form of the legend for the scene changes from Mathurâ to Dvârakâ, and his character is not quite the same in the two regions.

It is probable that an ancient military hero of the west has been combined with a deity or perhaps more than one deity.

The pile of story, sentiment and theology which ages have heaped up round Kṛishṇa's name, represents him in three principal aspects.

Thirdly, he is not only a deity, but he actually becomes God in the European and also in the pantheistic acceptation of the word, and is the centre of a philosophic theology.

The first of these aspects is clearly the oldest and it is here, if anywhere, that we may hope to find some fragments of history. But the embellishments of poets and story-tellers have been so many that we can only point to features which may indicate a substratum of fact. In the legend, Kṛishṇa assists the Pâṇḍavas against the Kauravas.

Now many think that the Pâṇḍavas represent a second and later immigration of Aryans into India, composed of tribes who had halted in the Himalayas and perhaps acquired some of the customs of the inhabitants, including polyandry, for the five Pâṇḍavas had one wife in common between them. Also, the meaning of the name Kṛishṇa, black, suggests that he was a chief of some non-Aryan tribe. It is, therefore, possible that one source of the Kṛishṇa myth is that a body of invading Aryans, described in the legend as the Pâṇḍavas, who had not exactly the same laws and beliefs as those already established in Hindustan, were aided by a powerful aboriginal chief, just as the Sisodias in Rajputana were aided by the Bhîls. It is possible too that Kṛishṇa's tribe may have come from Kabul or other mountainous districts of the north west, although one of the most definite points in the legend is his connection with the coast town of Dvârakâ. The fortifications of this town and the fruitless efforts of the demon king, Salva, to conquer it by seige are described in the Mahâbhârata, but the narrative is surrounded by an atmosphere of magic and miracle rather than of history.

Though it would not be reasonable to pick out the less fantastic parts of the Kṛishṇa legend and interpret them as history, yet we may fairly attach significance to the fact that many episodes represent him as in conflict with Brahmanic institutions and hardly maintaining the position of Vishṇu incarnate.
Thus he plunders Indra's garden and defeats the gods who attempt to resist him.
He fights with Śiva and Skanda.
He burns Benares and all its inhabitants.
Yet he is called Upendra, which, whatever other explanations sectarian ingenuity may invent, can hardly mean anything but the Lesser Indra,
and he fills the humble post of Arjuna's charioteer.
His kinsmen seem to have been of little repute, for part of his mission was to destroy his own clan and after presiding over its annihilation in internecine strife, he was slain himself.

In all this we see dimly the figure of some aboriginal hero who, though ultimately canonized, represented a force not in complete harmony with Brahmanic civilization.

The figure has also many solar attributes but these need not mean that its origin is to be sought in a sun myth, but rather that, as many early deities were forms of the sun, solar attributes came to be a natural part of divinity and were ascribed to the deified Kṛishṇa just as they were to the deified Buddha.

Some authors hold that the historical Kṛishṇa was a teacher, similar to Zarathustra, and that though of the military class he was chiefly occupied in founding or supporting what was afterwards known as the religion of the Bhâgavatas, a theistic system inculcating the worship of one God, called Bhâgavat, and perhaps identical with the Sun.

It is probable that Kṛishṇa the hero was connected with the worship of a special deity, but I see no evidence that he was primarily a teacher. In the earlier legends he is a man of arms: in the later he is not one who devotes his life to teaching but a forceful personage who explains the nature of God and the universe at the most unexpected moments. Now the founders of religions such as MahâVîra and Buddha preserve their character as teachers even in legend and do not accumulate miscellaneous heroic exploits. Similarly modern founders of sects, like Caitanya, though revered as incarnations, still retain their historical attributes. But on the other hand many men of action have been deified not because they taught anything but because they seemed to be more than human forces. Râma is a classical example of such deification and many local deities can be shown to be warriors, bandits and hunters whose powers inspired respect. It is said that there is a disposition in the Bombay Presidency to deify the Maratha leader Śivaji.

In his second aspect, Kṛishṇa is a pastoral deity, sporting among nymphs and cattle. It is possible that this Kṛishṇa is in his origin distinct from the violent and tragic hero of Dvârakâ. The two characters have little in common, except their lawlessness, and the date and locality of the two cycles of legend are different. But the death of Kaṃsa which is one of the oldest incidents in the story (for it is mentioned in the Mahâbhâshya) belongs to both and Kaṃsa is consistently connected with Muttra. The Mahâbhârata is mainly concerned with Kṛishṇa the warrior: the few allusions in it to the freaks of the pastoral Kṛishṇa occur in passages suspected of being late interpolations and, even if they are genuine, show that little attention was paid to his youth. But in later works, the relative importance is reversed and the figure of the amorous herdsman almost banishes the warrior.

We can trace the growth of this figure in the sculptures of the sixth century, in the Vishṇu and Bhâgavata Purâṇas and the Gîtâ-govinda (written about 1170). Even later is the worship of Râdhâ, Kṛishṇa's mistress, as a portion of the deity, who is supposed to have divided himself into male and female halves. The birth and adventures of the pastoral Kṛishṇa are located in the land of Braj, the district round Muttra and among the tribe of the Âbhîras, but the warlike Kṛishṇa is connected with the west, although his exploits extend to the Ganges valley. The Âbhîras, now called Ahirs, were nomadic herdsmen who came from the west and their movements between Kathiawar and Muttra may have something to do with the double location of the Kṛishṇa legend.

Both archæology and historical notices tell us something of the history of Muttra. It was a great Buddhist and Jain centre, as the statues and vihâras found there attest. Ptolemy calls it the city of the gods. Fa-Hsien (400 A.D.) describes it as Buddhist, but that faith was declining at the time of Hsüan Chuang's visit (c. 630 A.D.). The sculptural remains also indicate the presence of Græco-Bactrian influence. We need not therefore feel surprise if we find in the religious thought of Muttra elements traceable to Greece, Persia or Central Asia.

Some claim that Christianity should be reckoned among these elements and I shall discuss the question elsewhere. Here I will only say that such ideas as were common to Christianity and to the religions of Greece and western Asia probably did penetrate to India by the northern route, but of specifically Christian ideas I see no proof. It is true that the pastoral Kṛishṇa is unlike all earlier Indian deities, but then no close parallel to him can be adduced from elsewhere, and, take him as a whole, he is a decidedly un-Christian figure. The resemblance to Christianity consists in the worship of a divine child, together with his mother. But this feature is absent in the New Testament and seems to have been borrowed from paganism by Christianity.

The legends of Muttra show even clearer traces than those already quoted of hostility between Kṛishṇa and Brahmanism.  He forbids the worship of Indra, and when Indra in anger sends down a deluge of rain, he protects the country by holding up over it the hill of Goburdhan, which is still one of the great centres of pilgrimage. The language which the Vishṇu Purâṇa attributes to him is extremely remarkable.
He interrupts a sacrifice which his fosterfather is offering to Indra and says, "We have neither fields nor houses: we wander about happily wherever we list, travelling in our waggons. What have we to do with Indra? Cattle and mountains are (our) gods. Brahmans offer worship with prayer: cultivators of the earth adore their landmarks but we who tend our herds in the forests and mountains should worship them and our kine."

This passage suggests that Kṛishṇa represents a tribe of highland nomads who worshipped mountains and cattle and came to terms with the Brahmanic ritual only after a struggle. The worship of mountain spirits is common in Central Asia, but I do not know of any evidence for cattle-worship in those regions.

Clemens of Alexandria, writing at the end of the second century A.D., tells us that the Indians worshipped Herakles and Pan. The pastoral Kṛishṇa has considerable resemblance to Pan or a Faun, but no representations of such beings are recorded from Græco-Indian sculptures. Several Bacchic groups have however been discovered in Gandhara and also at Muttra and Megasthenes recognized Dionysus in some Indian deity. Though the Bacchic revels and mysteries do not explain the pastoral element in the Kṛishṇa legend, they offer a parallel to some of its other features, such as the dancing and the crowd of women, and I am inclined to think that such Greek ideas may have germinated and proved fruitful in Muttra.

The Greek king Menander is said to have occupied the city (c. 155 B.C.), and the sculptures found there indicate that Greek artistic forms were used to express Indian ideas. There may have been a similar fusion in religion.

In any case, Buddhism was predominant in Muttra for several centuries. It no doubt forbade the animal sacrifices of the Brahmans and favoured milder rites. It may even offer some explanation for the frivolous character of much in the Kṛishṇa legend. Most Brahmanic deities, extraordinary as their conduct often is, are serious and imposing. But Buddhism claimed for itself the serious side of religion and while it tolerated local godlings treated them as fairies or elves. It was perhaps while Kṛishṇa was a humble rustic deity of this sort, with no claim to represent the Almighty, that there first gathered round him the cycle of light love-stories which has clung to him ever since.

In the hands of the Brahmans his worship has undergone the strangest variations which touch the highest and lowest planes of Hinduism, but the Muttra legend still retains its special note of pastoral romance, and exhibits Kṛishṇa in two principal characters, as the divine child and as the divine lover. The mysteries of birth and of sexual union are congenial topics to Hindu theology, but in the cult of Muttra we are not concerned with reproduction as a world force, but simply with childhood and love as emotional manifestations of the deity. The same ideas occur in Christianity, and even in the Gospels Christ is compared to a bridegroom, but the Kṛishṇa legend is far more gross and naïve.

This represents him as a crawling child holding out one hand full of curds or butter which he has stolen. We speak of idolizing a child, and when Hindu women worship this image they are unconsciously generalizing the process and worshipping childhood, its wayward pranks as well as its loveable simplicity, and though it is hard for a man to think of the freaks of the butter thief as a manifestation of divinity, yet clearly there is an analogy between these childish escapades and the caprices of mature deities, which are respectfully described as mysteries. If one admits the worship of the Bambino, it is not unreasonable to include in it admiration of his rogueries, and the tender playfulness which is permitted to enter into this cult appeals profoundly to Indian women. Images of the Makhan Chor are sold by thousands in the streets of Muttra.

Even more popular is the image known as Kanhaya, which represents the god as a young man playing the flute as he stands in a careless attitude, which has something of Hellenic grace. Kṛishṇa in this form is the beloved of the Gopîs, or milk-maids, of the land of Braj, and the spouse of Râdhâ, though she had no monopoly of him.

The stories of his frolics with these damsels and the rites instituted in memory thereof have brought his worship into merited discredit.   

Iconographic Perception of Krishna's Image
Article of the Month - September 2004
by Prof. P. C. Jain
http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/krishnaimage

The Growth of Krishna-cult

“Early references to Krishna, sometimes as Krishna Harita, a teacher of 'Yoga' and metaphysics, and sometimes as Devaki Krishna, a great philosopher, occur in Vedic literature itself, but it is in the Mahabharata that he appears with a fully evolved personality as a great warrior, strategist, diplomat and finally in his Vishwa-rupa, manifesting the cosmos in his form. He was seen as incarnating Vishnu, the supreme Lord of all gods and all beings with a rank and distinction above them all. In the course of time, this Brahmanical cult of God as king, or Lord, had to face the challenge from the fast growing radicalism of Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity and subsequently from Islam that perceived in an humble human born prophet the ultimate divinity effecting transcendence of whosoever was devoted to his teachings. This forced brahmanical scriptures, though they yet continued with their incarnation theory, to minimize, or rather to give up, in their depiction of Krishna, his king-like 'above common man status'. They devoted greater space, instead, in delineating his exploits against evil forces, eliminating Putana, Trinavarta, Kaliya, Shakata, Keshi and finally Kansa, all doing in human form.

In most of these scriptures, the later part of his life, that is, after the Kansa-vadha, which is the prime thrust of the Mahabharata, has been dealt with just cursorily, obviously to avoid over emphasis on the depiction of his superhuman form.

By the eleventh-twelfth century, this thesis of God as king was seen as alienating the Brahmanical God from Indian masses and then emerged to its rescue the Krishna, as we know him now, a humble born and as humbly clad village stripling herding his cows, adorning himself with peacock feathers, blowing a bamboo pipe and flirting in the streets of Vrindavana with a country born lass and at times also with others.

He reveals now and then in his acts his divinity and rises in the estimation of the people of Vrindavana but the ties between the two are always those of love and not of devotion. He soars high but never beyond the muddy lanes of Vrindavana or the sandy banks of Yamuna. This Krishna did not emerge out of rhetoricians' discourses, or from metaphysicians' pen, but from the throats of poets, Jaideva, Vidyapati, Chandidasa, Suradas and Panchasakhas of Utkala, namely, Balarama, Jagannath, Yashovanta, Anant and Achutananda. The Vaishnava saints, Nimbarka, Vallabhacharya and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, did the rest. Vallabhacharya, and later his son Vitthal, in their Pushtimarg, not only diversified his seats to different parts of the subcontinent but also dismissed the cult of ritual worship, which only the Brahmins could accomplish. He introduced the cult of 'Sewa', or 'service', which anyone irrespective of his varna, caste, gender or social status could render. This Krishna made his way into the hearts of commoners, the peasants, households, artisans, and litterateurs and from amongst them emerged a new class of his devotees.

The peasantry discovered in this lad of Vrindavana, in this unique being, someone who belonged to them and the artists, poets, writers the main theme and the prime thrust of their arts and literature. Obviously, it was around this so-evolved form of Krishna that there developed his iconographic perception

Krishna's Early Iconography

His iconographic manifestation, as reveal epigraphic records, might have begun around the second century B. C., but the actual images discovered so far are not earlier than the first century A. D., that is, from the period of Kushana rulers. The group of these early icons comprises of three largely defaced Mathura sculptures, three sculptures from Gaya and a few terracotta plaques from Rajasthan. Mathura sculptures portray three figures each, a female in the center and two males on her two sides.

Triad consisting of Samkarsana/Balarama, Ekanamsa
and Vasudeva Krsna. Mathura Museum No. 67.529

Gandhi and Bhagavadgita 
J.T.F Jordens

This brings us to the question of how Gandhi conceived figure of Krishna, and how he interpreted the passages of the Gita which have very specific things to say about Krishna.  A letter to Jamnadas Gandhi written in 1900 shows …The essential ideas stated in that letter are the following.  Every atman about to attain moksa is an avatar or divine incarnation.  Once it has reached moksa, it naturally becomes one with the absolute, and as such perfect.  But while living on earth, avatars cannot be perfect…..

From those early days onward Gandhi often referred to imperfections of the historical Krishna, for example: “Krisha, Rama and others were divine incarnations….but we need not believe in their perfection while yet alive”. “nor do I regard Rama and Krishna as portrayed in the two poems as infallible beings.”  The historical Krishna was a man, an embodied atman just like every other human being.  Krishna brought to fruition through his own efforts his own potential of achieving moksa; as such he became an avatar.  But this potentiality is part of everyone’s being, …

”For the faithful Hindu, his incarnation is without blemish.  Krishna of the Hindu devotee is a perfect being”.  To him, this ideal, divine Krishna was “an imaginary figure”, “an imaginary incarnation.”  In his commentary of the gita, he succinctly explained it thus:

‘Krishna of Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified; but the picture is imaginary.  This does not mean that Krishan, the adored of the people, never lived.  But the perfection is imagined.  The idea of perfect incarnation is an after growth.”