॥ ॐ नमो भगवते वासुदेवाय ॥
Monday, 27 March 2023 - X a.01 - The story of Bhagavan Sri Krishna begins, in the most important part of Srimad Bhagavatam.
(Note: the very long tenth Skandha is divided into two- the Purvardha and Uttarardha. I am calling it X a. and X b.)
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This is the beginning of the most powerful section of this scripture. I am absorbing the importance of the moment. Therefore today, I shall give the text slides and the audio chanting for your experience today. Tomorrow I shall write the meanings of these important introductory shlokas.
However I have scanned a few short portions of an elaborate Prologue by Swami Tapasyananda for the entry into the theme. May Bhagavan Sri Krishna bless all!
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Srimad Bhagavata-Mahapurana
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Skandha Ten
PROLOGUE (Excerpts from Swami Tapasyananda)
Krishna-Historical and Mystical
The tenth Skandha, the longest section of the Text, containing ninety chapters and three thousand nine hundred and forty-six verses, is both the climax and the heart of Srimad Bhagavata, its theme being Apasraya or Ultimate Support (God), here identified with Sri Krishna. Some speak of Nirodha or Pralaya as the topic of this Skandha. Pralaya is interpreted by them as the laya or dissolution of the mind in God through hearing and contemplating on the devotional narratives and divine excellences described in this Skandha. They give Apasraya as the topic for the twelfth Skandha. The distinction thus made makes no difference, except that it may serve a schematic purpose.
As pointed out in the General Introduction, the specific teaching of the Bhagavata is that Bhakti is the fifth Purushartha or value attainable by man, thus supplementing the traditional conception of the four Purusharthas, Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, with Bhakti or Divine Service as the fifth, which is considered superior even to Mukti understood as attaining union in the Divine. It is even stated that the Lord bestows Mukti sometimes, but seldom Bhakti (Bh.V.6. 18). The unique feature of this summit Bhakti is that the Jiva feels the Almighty Lord as his 'own' and loses himself in His service, forgetting all considerations of selfish returns for oneself, including liberation from transmigratory existence. Service of the Supreme Being becomes the highest destiny of the Jiva.
While in all the earlier Skandhas these doctrines have been adumbrated, it is in the tenth Skandha, through the life and teachings of Sri Krishna and his relationship with his various devotees, that these doctrines are incisively taught, especially how God could be loved as one's own through the various channels of human love. An elaborate account of Krishna's life therefore forms the main topic of this Skandha.
Krishna's historicity
He must have flourished not later than 900 B.C, according to Pargitar in his book Ancient Indian Historical Traditions. Chandogya Upanishad makes mention of Devakiputra Krishna as the disciple of Ghorangiras, and the teachings ascribed to him here are in several respects in accordance with those of the Gita.
Panini, the founder of Sanskrit grammar, who, according to R.G. Bhandarkar, lived in the beginning of the 7th century before the Christian era, if not earlier still, speaks of 'Vasudevakas', or the sect that followed Vasudeva, indicating that much before his time Krishna-Vasudeva (Krishna the son of Vasudeva), the Vrishni hero and philosopher, had already been recognised as a divine personage and that his followers had spread far and wide, even up to Gandhara or Afghanistan where Panini lived.
Information about the wide-spread prevalence of the Krishna cult is got from the reference to it by the Greek ambassador Megasthenes (4th century B.C.); from the Ghosundi stone inscriptions (200-150 B.C.) informing of a Bhagavata setting up the compound wall of a temple of Vasudeva; from Basnagar inscriptions (100 B.C.) mentioning a Greek named Heladorus as a Paramabhāgavata; and from Nanaghar inscription (100 B.C.) which describes Vaasudeva as a Deity.
There is however another element in Krishna, besides his being a saintly philosopher and a hero of some royal clans of Mathura. It consists of his life among the cowherds in Vrindavana as the pastoral Krishna, taking a full part in the life of work, adventures and love of the pastoral and nomadic cowherds, which in later times has gained dominance over the other features of the Krishna saga. Historical students of Vaishnavism like Bhandarkar, who is very much dominated by the outlook of western scholars, have sought to analyse the Krishna saga as a combination of these three streams of tradition-the philosopher Devakiputra Krishna, the disciple of the Ghorangiras of the Chandogya Upanishad; Vasudeva-Krishna, the hero of the Mathura clans; and the Pastoral Krishna of the cowherds of Vrindavana. An analytical study like this seems at first illuminating, but will on scrutiny be found a mere unwarranted guesswork with the sole purpose of de-personalising a personality and making him a ridiculous and meaningless entity. It is like analysing the exquisitely beautiful body of a person into so many units of carbon and other constituent elements. Such an analysis may give us some interesting information but is counterproductive in the matter of giving us an insight into his personality.
So while we can in some way profit from the above-mentioned analytical study of Krishna, we can leave it aside as irrelevant in assessing his historicity. There is nothing contradictory and unbelievable in the same personality being the one person indicated by the three strands we find in analysing the Krishna of the Bhagavata. Krishna was on his mother's side Devaki-Putra (son of Devaki), and on his father's Vasudeva-Krishna (son of Vasudeva). He is therefore known both as Krishna and Vasudeva (वासुदेव).
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The Vrishni clan, to which he belonged, was a very important and wide-spread Vedic clan, and Krishna, its leader, by the power and holiness of his personality and the great part he played in the cultural and political life of his times as we find from the Mahabharata, became canonised among his clan and among many other people. He was looked upon as the Incarnation of Vishnu, the Godhead in Vaishnava theology.
In the Chandogya Upanishad, we find Ghorangiras instructing Krishna in meditation centring on the Solar Deity. Vishnu is identical to the Solar Deity of the Vedas, and it is He who is invoked in the great Gayatri Mantra of the Vedas. In course of time, Vishnu became the most dominant among the Vedic Deities and came to be accepted as the Supreme Being of whom the other Vedic Deities like Indra and Varuna became minor expressions.
Krishna, being an exponent of a theology extolling Vishnu, came to be recognised as an Incarnation of Vishnu Himself. It is not unusual in the history of cults for the founder or prophet of a cult to be recognised as the manifestation of the Cult-Deity Himself.
The main facts of Krishna's life can be gathered from the Bhagavata and the Mahabharata. He was born in captivity in the prison of the tyrant king Kamsa of Mathura, as the son of Vasudeva, a leader of the Vrishnis whom Kamsa was trying to suppress. He was transferred immediately after birth from the city of Kamsa to the cowherd settlement (Gokula) of a chieftain of herdsmen called Nanda. It was in the Gokula of Nanda at Brihadvana and at Vrindavana that he grew up into youth. Some of the most important spiritual manifestations of Krishna the Incarnate took place in those places. From Vrindavana, he migrated to Mathura, the capital of Kamsa, and killed Kamsa, the oppressive king. From this time onwards he gradually became the leader of his Vrishni clan, though he did not assume their kingship. He suppressed many tyrant kings of his time, the chief of these being Jarasandha of Magadha, Yavana, Bana, Salva, and Sisupala. He made the Vrishnis one of the most powerful people of the times.
The Bhagavata Dharma is noted for the fact that it is meant for every man. The Vedic teachings catered mainly for the elite. The Vedic religion had, on the one hand, got elaborated into a vast system of complicated sacrificial rituals, to which only the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas were eligible. On the other hand, it developed the philosophy of the Upanishads which required high intellectual training and moral competency for their comprehension. It was to the credit of Sri Krishna that, when the common man in India was without a simple and vital religion, he him with a devotional gospel in which action, emotion and intellect played equal parts, and with a universal Ishwara who could be communed with through love and service and who responded to the prayers and the deepest yearnings of man.
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॥ ॐ नमो भगवते वासुदेवाय ॥
