Krishna, pleased at Arjuna's confidence and, at his request, agreed to be his charioteer.
Arjuna had made the right choice. The Pandavas did not lack warriors, what they needed
was a dispassionate, determined counsellor. That they found in Krishna. (This can perhaps explain why Krishna chose to participate in the war unarmed, who would offer advice free from a warrior's passion)
Even on their last day, Krishna had to take the initiative in providing for the
safety of the others. He brought the women and children into the city and returned to
stand by Balarama, to whom he had been loyal all his life. He found Balarama dead. He
was free to go back into the safety of the city but he chose to remain outside. This
deliberate choice of death rather than safety fits into the role he had played throughout his
life. He was Krishna Vasu-deva, the resplendent one, the one who lacked nothing, the one
who gave magnificently. He could not remain with the women and children, awaiting
rescue by Arjuna. He could not live under the protection of anyone, even of the Pandavas.
He welcomed death, as all other actions of his life, with conscious deliberation.
After Krishna's death
Krishna had died. The Pandavas had died. But Krishna was reborn. The Abhiras, the
very people who destroyed Dvaraka, brought Krishna back to life by making him their
god. As they gradually established kingdoms in western India, like all other newly come
rulers in India, they laid claims to Kshatriyahood. They took the name of their
predecessors, the Yadavas and made Krishna their god. The Abhiras were keepers of
cows and they made their god a cowherd. Stories were elaborated about the child
Krishna, stealing butter, playing pranks and making love to the milkmaids.
This transformation of Krishna is something of a paradox. The Krishna of the
Mahabharata is wholly human but his complexity and a kind of uninvolvement in his
most intense action make him hard to grasp. We cannot feel close to the Mahabharata
Krishna. The cowherds made Krishna a god. Krishna's teaching was contained in the first six chapters of Bhagavadgita. Even in these chapters about half is later addition. In these
verses Krishna talks as a man to his friend who is caught in a terrible mental crisis and
needs guidance. But it is a guidance given to an equal and not to a devotee. The teaching
is free of later bhakti- (devotion to god) principle. It does not contain the wealth of
philosophical terminology seen in the later chapters of Gita. This advice given to Arjuna did not bear fruit, because the two people Arjuna did not wish to kill by his hands were not killed by him.(Bhishma and Drona)
My favourite passage from the essay 😳:
Krishna remains an elusive personality for this very reason. He worked, he thought
intensely, he advised, but we do not find him cast down or mourning because his works,
thought or advice did not bear fruit. He danced in joy, he killed in anger his own kinsmen
as we are told in Mousala-parvan, but we do not find him mouring even after the terrible
end of his clan. He made arrangements that the old and the very young and women be
taken care of and met his death. This is what he would have called Yoga, this calm, this
uninvolvement. This is why Krishna remains a figure for thought and search but never
touches one emotionally as do other figures of this great epic. It might have been for this
reason that when at last he was made into a God, he became a God with the warmest
human qualities: the naughty child, the playmate of simple cowherds, and the eternal
lover of all the young women of India.
Hindi TV Shows
Kumkum Bhagya
Cricket
