The Divine Child

In the city of Mathura the rains had come early, and the night was thick with thunder. Deep within the king's fortress, in a cell of iron and stone, Devaki lay upon a bed of straw while her husband Vasudeva watched over her. They were prisoners of Devaki's own brother, the tyrant Kamsa, who had heard a voice from the sky on his sister's wedding day. The voice had told him that her eighth son would be the cause of his death.

Kamsa was a man who feared nothing except prophecy. To cheat it he had imprisoned the newlyweds and had killed, one by one, the children Devaki bore. Six had perished in his cruel hands. Now the eighth was about to come into the world, and the whole creation seemed to hold its breath.

At the darkest hour the child was born, and the cell filled with a light that did not belong to any lamp. For a single moment Vasudeva and Devaki saw the infant not as a baby but as the Lord himself, crowned and four-armed, holding conch and discus, with the whole of time turning quietly in his eyes. They folded their hands and wept, for they understood at last whom they had been chosen to carry.

"Do not be afraid," the child said, and his voice was both thunder and a mother's lullaby. "Beyond this river, in the cowherd village of Gokul, Nanda's wife Yashoda has this very night given birth to a daughter. Carry me there and bring the girl back in my place. No one shall stop you, for tonight the world sleeps at my command."

Then the radiance softened, and once more there was only a newborn boy, dark as a rain cloud, crying the small cry of all children who have just been born.

As the child finished speaking, a great drowsiness fell over the fortress. The chains that bound Vasudeva's wrists slipped loose and fell to the floor without a sound. The heavy bolts of the cell drew back of their own accord, and the guards at every door sank into a sleep so deep that no clap of thunder could wake them.

Vasudeva could scarcely believe his hands were free. He lifted the infant gently, wrapped him against the rain, and set the basket upon his head. Step by quiet step he passed the sleeping sentries, through gate after gate, until he stood at last outside the walls of Mathura with the storm roaring around him and the swollen Yamuna blocking his path.

The river was a monster that night, brown and furious, rising as if to swallow the road. Vasudeva did not stop. He stepped into the water with the child held high, and a strange thing happened. The river, which had drowned travellers all that season, recognized its Lord. The current grew gentle and parted before him, and the water rose only to his waist as he walked.

From the surface of the flood the great serpent Shesha lifted his many hoods and spread them like an umbrella above the basket, so that not a single drop of rain touched the divine child. Lightning lit the water, and Vasudeva went forward without fear, one careful step after another, until the far bank rose dark and welcoming before him.

He came into Gokul through the mud and the wind, and the whole village lay sleeping as the boy had foretold. In Nanda's house he found Yashoda exhausted from her own labour, a newborn girl at her side, neither mother nor child stirring. Softly Vasudeva laid his son beside Yashoda, took up the little girl, and turned back toward the river and the prison, his heart breaking and full at once. He had given his son into another's arms so that the son might live.

When morning came to Gokul the rain had passed, and the air smelled of wet earth and fresh milk. Yashoda woke to find a dark and beautiful boy at her breast, and her heart claimed him at once without question. Nanda, the gentle chief of the cowherds, was beside himself with joy. He had longed for a son for many years, and now one had come on a night of miracles. He sent for the brahmanas, gave away cattle and grain, and ordered the whole village to rejoice.

The people of Gokul gathered to bless the child. They smeared themselves and one another with curds and butter and turmeric in their happiness, dancing and singing among the cattle pens until the dust rose golden in the sun. None of them knew that the infant in Yashoda's lap had crossed a flooded river in the night, or that a king across the water was even then plotting his death. To them he was simply Nanda's son, the loveliest baby ever born under their wide sky.

Far away in Mathura, Kamsa had been woken by the cry of the girl-child. He rushed to the prison and seized her, meaning to dash her against the stone as he had done with the others. But the child slipped from his grasp and rose into the air, blazing with light, revealing herself as a goddess.

"Fool," she said, her voice ringing through the cell. "The one who will end you is already born and is growing safe and far from here. Your sword will not find him until the hour he chooses." Then she vanished, and Kamsa was left clutching empty air, his terror greater than before.

In his rage and fear the king summoned his servants and his demons, and gave a single command. Every infant in the cowherd country was to be hunted down and destroyed, that the prophesied child might not escape. So even as Gokul danced, a shadow began to move across the land toward the laughing boy in Yashoda's arms.

First among Kamsa's servants came Putana, a fearsome demoness who could take any shape she pleased. She smeared poison upon her breasts, a poison so deadly that the smallest taste would kill a grown man, and she made herself beautiful, soft of voice and kind of face, so that no one would suspect her. In this guise she walked into Gokul as if she were a noblewoman come to bless the newborns.

The cowherd mothers, charmed by her gentle manner, let her pass freely among them. She went from house to house until she found the one she sought, and there she lifted the dark child from his cradle with a smile and held him to her poisoned breast.

The baby looked up at her with his deep, knowing eyes. He took hold of her and began to feed, but he drank not only her poison. He drew out her very life, her strength, her breath, all that she was, with a force she could not resist. Putana shrieked and tried to fling him off, but his small hands held her fast as iron. Her false beauty fell away. She grew vast and monstrous, her true and terrible form sprawling across the fields as she crashed down dead, her body so huge that it flattened the trees.

The villagers ran to the cradle in terror, certain the child must be harmed. But there he was, crawling upon the giant corpse and gurgling happily, entirely unhurt. Yashoda snatched him up and held him close, weeping with relief, and the elders waved cow-tail whisks over him and chanted the holy names to ward off evil.

The wise among them marvelled, for though Putana had come to murder the child, she had given him her breast as a mother would. And because of that single act, demoness though she was, her dark soul was washed clean by his touch, and she rose to a peace she had never earned in life. So the first of Kamsa's killers met her end, and the village understood that no ordinary boy lived among them.

Other demons came, and each one fell. A cart loaded with vessels was overturned and shattered when the infant kicked it with his tiny foot, crushing the spirit that lurked beneath it. The whirlwind demon Trinavarta swept the child up into a roaring storm of dust, meaning to carry him to his death, but the boy grew suddenly so heavy that the whirlwind could not bear him, and the demon fell choking from the sky while the baby drifted down unharmed into his mother's reach.

Through all of it Yashoda saw only her own dear son, growing day by day into a restless, laughing toddler who could already crawl faster than she could chase. He was forever into mischief, pulling the tails of calves, tumbling among the milk pots, putting whatever he found into his mouth.

One afternoon his playmates came running to Yashoda. "He has been eating dirt," they cried. "We saw him." Yashoda came with a switch in her hand, frowning, and took the boy by the chin. "Open your mouth," she said sternly. "Show me. Have you been eating mud again?"

The child opened his mouth wide, as innocent as the morning. And Yashoda, peering in, forgot to breathe. For inside that small mouth she saw not mud, not even teeth and tongue, but the whole of creation turning. She saw the sky and the earth and the wheeling stars, the mountains and the seas, the wind and the fire, the moon and the sun. She saw all the worlds that are and have been, and somewhere within that endless vision she saw Gokul, and herself, standing there holding her own son and gazing into his mouth.

A great trembling came over her, and for one moment she knew exactly who this child was. Then a sweet forgetfulness rose like mist, the vision faded, and she felt only the warm, ordinary love of a mother for her boy. She dropped the switch, gathered him into her lap, and held him, half laughing and half in tears, never quite remembering what she had seen.

As the herds grew and the village prospered, Nanda moved his people to the green pastures of Vrindavan, where the forest met the river and the grass never failed. Here Krishna grew from a toddler into a bright-eyed boy, and here he earned the name by which the cowherd women would forever scold and adore him, Makhan Chor, the butter thief.

The homes of Vrindavan were rich with milk and curds, and the women churned fresh butter each morning and hung it high in pots from the rafters, far out of a child's reach. But no rafter was high enough for Krishna. He gathered his band of small friends and turned thieving into a game. They would stack pots and stools and climb upon one another's shoulders, and the boy at the top, dark and laughing, would break open the hanging vessel and share the sweet butter among them all, smearing it on his cheeks and feeding it even to the watching monkeys.

When the women came to catch him he was already gone, slipping away between the houses with butter on his lips and mischief in his eyes. They would come to Yashoda in a body, half angry and half charmed, to complain of her son's raids. "He unties our calves before milking time," said one. "He breaks our pots," said another. "He makes faces and steals the butter from under our very hands." Yet even as they scolded they could not keep from smiling, for there was no cruelty in him, only a wild and irresistible joy.

One morning Yashoda caught him in the act, his hand deep in the butter pot, and resolved at last to discipline him. She fetched a rope to tie him to a heavy grinding mortar so he could not run off. But however much rope she wound about his small waist, it always fell short by two fingers' width. She tied on more and more, until every cord in the house was knotted together, and still it would not reach. At last, seeing his mother flushed and weary and refusing to give up, the boy let her bind him, surrendering of his own will to her love. He who cannot be bound by all the ropes in the world allowed himself to be tied by a mother who would not stop trying.

There was a deep pool in the Yamuna where the cowherds dared not go, for in its depths lived the serpent king Kaliya, a creature with many hoods and venom enough to poison the whole river. The water near his lair boiled and steamed; birds that flew over it fell dead, and the grass on the banks withered. The men of Vrindavan watered their cattle far from that place and warned their children never to swim there.

One hot day, while Krishna and his friends drove the cows along the river, some of the herd drank from the poisoned shallows and fell down senseless. Krishna saw the suffering of his people and the death seeping into their river, and he resolved to cleanse it. There stood upon the bank a single tall kadamba tree whose branches reached over the dark pool. The boy climbed it, tightened his cloth, and with a cry that startled the herons, leapt far out into the deadly water.

The pool erupted. Kaliya rose in fury, coiling his vast body around the boy, wrapping coil upon coil to crush the life from this trespasser. On the bank the cowherds wailed and Yashoda had to be held back from throwing herself into the flood. But Krishna only grew, expanding within the serpent's grip until the coils could no longer hold him, and he slipped free and rose to dance upon Kaliya's many heads.

It was a dance like no other. Light and merciless, the boy leapt from hood to hood, and wherever his feet came down he pressed the serpent low into the water, treading the venom and the pride out of him. Blood and poison spilled from Kaliya's mouths. The great snake weakened, and his many wives, the serpent queens, rose from the depths with folded hoods to plead for his life.

Kaliya himself, broken at last, bowed his battered heads and begged forgiveness. Krishna, who punishes only to redeem, stayed his dancing feet. "You shall not die," he said, "but you may not stay here. Take your kin and go to the wide ocean, and harm my people no more. The mark of my feet upon your hoods will keep even your old enemy Garuda from troubling you." And so the serpent withdrew to the sea, the poison left the Yamuna, and its waters ran clear and sweet once more, while the people of Vrindavan stood weeping with relief on the bank.

Each year the cowherds of Vrindavan held a great festival in honour of Indra, lord of the rains and the heavens, hoping the king of the gods would send the showers that fed their pastures. As the season came round again, the village made ready their offerings of grain and milk and ghee. But Krishna, now a confident boy, went among the elders and asked them a simple question. Why worship a distant god in the sky, he said, when it is this hill, Govardhana, with its green slopes and sweet springs and rich grass, that truly feeds the cattle and shelters the people? Let the offerings go to the mountain and to the cows that give us life.

The cowherds, persuaded by his words, turned their festival toward Govardhana. They walked around the hill, fed the brahmanas, garlanded the cattle, and gave thanks to the land itself. The mountain, it is said, took a form and ate the feast they offered. But Indra, robbed of his worship, was filled with wounded pride and terrible anger.

In his rage Indra called forth the clouds of universal destruction and loosed them upon Vrindavan. The sky went black at midday. Rain fell not in drops but in ropes and torrents, hail battered the fields, and lightning walked the ground. The river overran its banks, and the terrified people, with their children and their lowing cattle, came running to Krishna, for they had followed his counsel and now the heavens themselves seemed bent on drowning them.

Krishna went to the foot of Govardhana. He bent down, set his hand beneath the great hill, and lifted it whole into the air as easily as a child lifts a mushroom, balancing the entire mountain upon the little finger of his left hand. "Come," he called to the people. "Bring the cattle, bring your families, shelter here and have no fear."

For seven days and seven nights the storm raged, and for seven days and seven nights the boy held the mountain aloft while the whole of Vrindavan sheltered beneath it, dry and safe, gazing up in wonder at the child who had become their roof. At last Indra, his fury spent and his pride broken, understood whom he had defied. The clouds parted, the sun returned, and Krishna gently set the hill back upon its roots. Indra came down humbled and bowed before the boy, begging forgiveness, and Krishna received him kindly, for he had never sought the god's destruction, only the end of his arrogance.

The boy grew into a youth, and his beauty became a thing that the people of Vrindavan spoke of in hushed and happy voices. Above all things he loved his flute, and when he wandered the forest paths in the evening and set the bamboo to his lips, the whole world seemed to lean in to listen. The cattle stopped their grazing. The river slowed. The peacocks spread their tails and the deer stood still with their ears turned toward the sound.

Most of all the gopis, the cowherd girls of Vrindavan, heard that flute, and their hearts were not their own. The melody called to something in them deeper than thought. One autumn night, when the full moon poured its light across the forest and the jasmine opened in the dark, the sound of Krishna's flute came drifting through the village, and the gopis could not remain. Leaving their houses and their tasks and all their cares, they slipped out one by one and followed the music to the sandy banks of the Yamuna.

There in the silver moonlight Krishna received them, and a dance began such as the earth had never seen. It is called the raas leela, the dance of divine love. The gopis joined hands in a great circle, and so that each one might feel he was beside her alone, Krishna multiplied himself, standing between every pair of dancers at once, so that every gopi danced hand in hand with her beloved Lord. The river sang, the moon brightened, and the gods themselves leaned from the sky to watch.

This was not the love of the body but the longing of every soul for the divine, given form in moonlight and music and the turning of the dance. In the gopis' yearning the sages saw the highest devotion, the heart that forgets itself entirely and runs toward God with nothing held back. All night the dance went on outside of ordinary time, and when at last the moon set, the gopis returned to their homes carrying within them a sweetness they would never lose.

Yet even in the midst of such joy there hung a shadow that none of them spoke of. They knew, in the way that the heart knows what it does not wish to know, that this dark and laughing boy was not theirs to keep, that he had come among them for a season only, and that one day the road to Mathura would call him away.

Across the river in Mathura, the tyrant Kamsa had not forgotten the prophecy, and his spies had at last brought him word of a cowherd youth in Vrindavan whose deeds no mortal boy could match. A serpent danced upon, a mountain lifted, every assassin sent against him slain. Kamsa knew, with a cold certainty, that the eighth child of Devaki had eluded him and grown to manhood. Rather than send more demons to die, the king devised a final trap. He would invite the boy to Mathura under the pretext of a grand festival and a wrestling tournament, and there, in his own arena, surrounded by his own champions, he would have him killed.

He sent his minister Akrura, a good and devout man, to bring Krishna and his brother Balarama to the city. Akrura came to Vrindavan with mixed feelings, joyful to set eyes at last upon the Lord he had heard so much of, sorrowful to be the instrument of parting. When the chariot rolled into the village and the purpose of the visit became known, a great grief swept through Vrindavan.

The gopis wept and clung to the wheels of the chariot, the cowherds stood silent and stricken, and Yashoda and Nanda held their son and could not let him go. Krishna comforted them all with gentle words. He had been born among them for the sake of love, but he had been born for a greater purpose too, to lift the yoke of tyranny from the land and to set right the order of the world. He promised that he would never truly leave the hearts that held him.

At dawn the chariot carried Krishna and Balarama away toward Mathura, and the dust of the road hid them from the watching village. The boy who had stolen butter and danced upon serpents and held a mountain upon his finger was riding to meet his destiny. In Mathura, Kamsa waited with his wrestlers and his mad elephant and his hidden blades, never guessing that the trap he had set would close instead upon himself.

So ended the childhood play of the Lord in Gokul and Vrindavan, and so began the next turning of the great wheel. The cowherd boy was leaving the forest of his innocence to free his true parents, to overthrow the tyrant, and to walk at last onto the wide and fateful road that would one day lead him to the field of Kurukshetra and the song he would sing to a doubting friend in the hour of battle.