Krsna: Lord or Avatara?

The Relationship Between Krsna and Visnu

Freda Matchett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780700712816
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136118425
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This is a study of three Sanskrit texts, the Harivamsa, the Visnupurana, and the Bhagavatabelonging to the puranic genre, the chief source of knowledge of the origins of popular Hinduism. It treats them as integrated compositions and displays the theological motives and creative skill which have gone into the making of them. It shows how all three texts contain narratives which present Krishna as one of several subordinate manifestations (avataras) of Vishnu. All three use much the same traditional material, yet each, by arranging this material in its own way, presents a distinctive view of Krishna, and the most influential of them, the Bhagavata , builds up a world view in which Krishna, not Vishnu, is supreme.

Chapter One

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Kṛṣṇa, Viṣṇu and
the avatāra myth

Believers in God, whatever their religious affiliation, find themselves trying to reconcile two apparently opposing needs. On the one hand the object of their worship must be beyond human comprehension, supreme over the universe which he/she creates, sustains and encompasses, and on the other hand they need a God whose love and care are accessible to the humblest worshipper. Sometimes the attempt to satisfy these needs has taken the form of postulating a transcendent Supreme God who manifests him/herself in an accessible form or a variety of such forms. Within Hindu theism, or more precisely within Vaiṣṇavism, these needs were factors in the rise of the avatāra doctrine, the idea that the Supreme God, the Lord of the world, ‘descended’¹ from time to time into his own world to help its inhabitants.

The best-known of these ‘descents’ is Kṛṣṇa. The Vaiṣṇava tradition oscillates between two different ways of seeing him. Besides being the eighth in one version of the standard list of the Supreme God Viṣṇu's ten avatāras,² he is also worshipped by millions in India and throughout the world as Supreme God himself (even though the very same temple in which Kṛṣṇa's image occupies the central place may also contain a picture in which he features among the avatāras). A historical progression from being admired as a tribal hero to being worshipped as God might seem to be the reason for this dual status of Kṛṣṇa,³ but a serious objection to such an explanation is constituted by the fact that it is in one of the earliest texts which centre upon Kṛṣṇa, the Bhagavadgītā, that he appears at his most God-like. The Kṛṣṇa of the Gītā, the Bhagavān who teaches Arjuna that all offerings to any divinity are really offered to him, is obviously presenting himself as the one true God. Yet it may be claimed that Kṛṣṇa is speaking here as one of Viṣṇu's avatāras, so that it is Viṣṇu who is being presented as God. As Friedhelm Hardy says, the concept of Bhagavān, ‘a single, all-powerful, eternal, personal and loving God … is an empty slot, to be filled by concrete characteristics which then make up a specific Bhagavān-figure who serves as (the one and only) God to a given group of people’.⁴ In the case of Viṣṇu and Kṛṣṇa, it is not easy to see whether there are two contenders for this slot or whether Kṛṣṇa is to be subordinated to Viṣṇu as one among several of the latter's manifestations.

This book sets out to explore the relationship between Viṣṇu and Kṛṣṇa in the context of the avatāra myth as it is presented in three major Vaiṣṇava texts of the first millennium CE: the Harivaṃśa, the Viṣṇupurāṇa and the Bhāgavatapurāṇa.⁵ The context of the avatāra myth would appear to foreclose the question of Kṛṣṇa's status. If he is one of the subordinate manifestations of Viṣṇu, the claims of those who see him as God in his own right can surely be dismissed as poetic hyperbole rather than taken seriously as theological assertions. Yet the avatāra myth may be used in such a way as to affirm Kṛṣṇa's supremacy rather than to deny it, so that Kṛṣṇa's status in these three texts is not the foregone conclusion that it might seem.

None of these texts has ever been regarded, or ought to be regarded, as a piece of systematic theology. All three deal in narrative, poetry and myth, not in doctrine and argument. Yet they use narrative, poetry and myth in such a way as to set up tensions and balances between the figures of Kṛṣṇa and Viṣṇu, weaving together the same themes in different ways. The Harivaṃśa sets Kṛṣṇa's life into the overall context of the Mahābhārata, while supplying its own immediate context which relates Kṛṣṇa to Viṣṇu and to the universe. In the Viṣṇu and the Bhāgavata this life is presented in relation to a fully developed cosmology. In the Viṣṇu the avatāra idea is almost lost in this new perspective, but in the Bhāgavata it is brought into play again in a new and dynamic way, so that Kṛṣṇa's story becomes both the key to the universe's meaning and the model of that divine grace which informs all the other avatāra stories.

The literary standing of the Purāṇas, the genre to which all three texts belong,⁶ has usually been regarded as low by both Indian and Western scholars. For Indian scholars this is because they fail to conform to the standards of Sanskrit poetics.⁷ For Westerners it is at least partly because they are mainly compilations of traditional material rather than original compositions. In Western culture the word ‘compilation’ tends to have a somewhat negative meaning, being often prefaced by the adjective ‘mere’.⁸ It suggests a collage of miscellaneous material with little in the way of structure and development, often centred loosely upon some well-worn theme and repeating what is already familiar. A ‘compiler’ likewise calls to mind ‘someone not particularly creative or imaginative, and certainly not original’.⁹ Within the Hindu tradition, however, ‘compilation’ and ‘compiler’ have higher connotations. One of the most prestigious figures in Hindu mythology is Vyāsa. He is the origin, humanly speaking, of the Vedas, the Vedāntasūtra, the Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas. He is the Arranger or Compiler: that is what his name, or to be more precise his title, means.¹⁰

For the Hindu, the act of arranging is in fact a form of creating, perhaps even the highest form. As Hindus see the cosmos, it is created and recreated in a never-ending cycle of great acts of arrangement and rearrangement. In contrast to the Christian idea of creatio ex nihilo, the Hindu tradition sees creation as the repeated differentiation of the unmanifest primordial materiality into a seemingly infinite number of forms which can be arranged into a variety of patterns,¹¹ not only through re-creation (where the same patterns recur, as Viṣṇu 1.5.63–7 indicates), but also through the way in which various myths or cycles of myths can arrange themes or figures in different sequences.¹² It is this perception of the cosmos which gives to Hindu mythology its kaleidoscopic quality: the basic elements can be shaken up together time and again so that they fall into new configurations.¹³

In the Harivaṃśa, the Viṣṇu and the Bhāgavata, the basic elements of the avatāra myth and the life of Kṛṣṇa are shaken up together so as to produce three different configurations. To a greater or lesser degree all three texts make use of the same traditional material, but they ring the changes on it by various devices such as framing, drawing of parallels, introducing passages of praise or prayer (this is especially true of the Viṣṇu), shifts in perspective, changes in time, echoes of other texts (used to particular effect in the Bhāgavata), use of older ideas to give a new interpretation, and relocation of incidents. These devices will be amply illustrated in later chapters. The immediate task is to separate out the theological and the literary strands of this study, so this chapter will deal first with the avatāra myth as a theological development within Vaiṣṇavism and then with the three texts in which the use of the avatāra myth is to be explored.

THE AVATĀRA DRAMA: KṚṢṄA AS ACTOR AND AS ROLE

Although its primary meaning is ‘descent’, the word avatāra is often translated into English as ‘incarnation’. This is misleading because it suggests too strong a resemblance to the Incarnation of Christian theology. The Latin incarnatio, like the Greek ensarkosis which it translates, implies that what is important in the Christian concept is that the divine personage should be ‘in the flesh’, i.e. totally real in human terms, all of a piece with the rest of human history. Whereas Christians have been reluctant to use words like ‘appearance’ or ‘manifestation’ of their incarnate Lord, such ideas are implicit in the term avatāra, since it has associations with the theatre (raṅgāvataraṇa, ‘entering on the stage’, is a word for the acting profession; raṅgāvatāraka is an actor).¹⁴ The avatāra is God appearing upon the world's stage, having descended from the highest level of reality to that of the trailokya (the triple world of devas, asuras¹⁵ and human beings) in order to perform some beneficial action, notably the restoration of the socio-cosmic order (dharma).¹⁶ It is not simply a question of the transformation of any celestial being into another shape. The transformation must be that of the Supreme God and it must be undertaken for the good of the world, or of some individual within the world.

The avatāra myth is usually regarded as a distinctive feature of Vaiṣṇavism. Although there are texts which describe successive manifestations of Śiva and Devī,¹⁷ it is clear from even a superficial reading that these passages are directly imitative of Vaiṣṇava avatāra lists.¹⁸ The avatāras of Viṣṇu carry a greater theological weight than those of Śiva or Devī. The qualities which characterise Śiva — e.g. his combination of ascetic and householder lifestyles, the extravagance of his grief or anger¹⁹ — are not illustrated by stories of his avatāras. Take away Śiva's avatāras and a rich mythology remains. Take away the avatāras of Viṣṇu and his mythology is impoverished because it is precisely in these episodes that he most often shows his characteristic concern for dharma, his benevolence towards human beings and his power to save.

Although it is usual to speak of Viṣṇu as the source of the avatāras, this is only one of the names of the Supreme God of Vaiṣṇavism. He is also known as Nārāyaṇa, Vāsudeva and Kṛṣṇa, and behind each of these names is a divine figure with his own characteristics and associations. The fact that the tradition which worships him is known as Vaiṣṇavism does not mean that the process of fusion, whereby the traits of these four divine fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Studies in Asian Religion
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Kṛṣṇrsna, Viṣṇu and the avatāra myth
• 2 Epic evaluations of Kṛṣṇa
• 3 Kṛṣṇa in the Harivaṃśa
• 4 The all-pervading Viṣṇu
• 5 Kṛṣṇa in the Viṣṇupurāṇa
• 6 The Bible of Kṛṣṇaism
• 7 Kṛṣṇa in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa
• 8 The Lord's cosmic play
• 9 The Supreme Reality: Kṛṣṇa or Viṣṇu?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index