|| Doubts and Discussions Thread: Shri Krishna || - Page 3

The Narakasura story itself is a popular one so it's shown for his death, more than the importance of his marriage to the 16,100 wives. It would be nice to see the other queens too, but this serial doesn't even show Satyabhama and Jambavathi after a while. They just fade into the backdrop and it's just Rukmini during the latter part of the show.

It would be nice to have a show solely based on the Ashtabharya. There is some nice material available on them for anyone who's interested in directing it, and people have written some good novels on them too, even if direct source material isn't available. I'd like to see a show on Krishna's home life that doesn't focus on MB or the Pandavas. 

Okay, my next question is about the sequence of events.  They show Lakshagriha, then Krishna's abduction of Rukmini, then Draupadi's marriage, then Arjun's marriage w/ Subhadra and then Krishna's marriages w/ Jambavati and Satyabhama.

But if one looks at SB, then in Chapter 57, it's clearly mentioned:

Chapter 56 deals w/ the story of the Syamantaka gem, and Krishna's marriages to Jambavati and Satyabhama

So the overall sequence of events would have been something like

• Krishna & Yadavas move from Mathura to Dwarka
• Abduction of Rukmini
• Marriages to Satyabhama & Jambavati
• Lakshagriha, when Krishna & Balarama went to Hastinapur to participate in the charade of mourning the Pandavas (contrary to what the serial shows)
• Satyajit is murdered, and Krishna and Satyabhama return to Dwarka to hunt down Satadhandwa
• Balarama goes to Mithila and teaches Duryodhan advanced gada-yudh
• Draupadi's swayamvar happens
  

Krishna's marriages w/ his next 5 wives, starting w/ Kalindi, began w/ the Pandava rule at Indraprastha.  He met Kalindi thru Arjun, and took her back to Dwarka and married her.  He then married the other 4 princesses - Bhadra, Mitravindya,  Satya and Lakshmanaa.

Subhadra's marriage happened during Arjun's 12 year exile, not during the above events.  At any rate, forget Subhadra, even Draupadi's marriage couldn't have happened before Satyabhama's.  The serial somewhat lost it in the sequencing

The show actually got carried away after the vastraharan to show almost only the Mahabharat, and didn't return until the deaths of Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti.  That's when Krishna leaves the Pandavas and has his wars against Vajranam and Banasura.

Otherwise, it's bizarre that this serial didn't cover a lot of things, such as Balarama killing Rukmi, Krishna killing Shalva, which was a pretty major war that he fought, as well as the killing of Dantavatra (the final Jaya/Vijaya cursed character) and Vidyurath.  Instead it goes into the Mahabharat, and then gets lost in Arjun and Karna.

Also, how did the Pradhyumna story consume so many episodes, when other stories w/ Krishna just got passing references?

Another question: during Rukmini's marriage discussions, it was mentioned that Bheeshmaka's dynasty was a Suryavanshi dynasty.  But the evidence seems to suggest otherwise: after Rukmi was defeated and couldn't therefore return to Kundinpur, he built a new city called Bhojakot - meaning fort of the Bhojas.  Since when were Bhojas Suryavanshis?

Also, the serial stated that Rukmi had learned the Brahmastra from Parashurama.  Where is this ever stated?  It's well known that Parashurama loathed Kshatriyas, hence his issues w/ Karna, and the only reason he taught Bheeshma was that the request came from Ganga.  Why would Parashurama have taken Rukmi into his tutelage?

To be honest, I don't remember much of the show after the Swapnil phase. I had only watched it once with my family and remember that I liked a few sequences (like the parijata one and the tulaabharam) but mostly I got bored with the way the show ran and didn't like it enough to rewatch it multiple times. So I don't remember what they showed or in what sequence.

I just remember that the abduction of Pradyumna was the most dragged out sequence of the show and gave me palpitations from the sheer frustration of seeing the demon Sambara drag out the kidnapping over a span of 5 1-hour long episodes. 🤪 I could have finished the entire Pride and Prejudice mini-series in the span of those episodes alone. 🤣

Okay, another thought that struck me: once Kansa was killed and Ugrasena was restored, Krishna and Balarama went to Avantika to study w/ Rishi Sandipan for some years.

During that time, Jarasandha would surely have gotten the news of Kansa's death and the fact that his daughters had been widowed.  Why wouldn't he have attacked Mathura immediately?  Or if his target was only Krishna, why not send a mission to Avantika to seize Krishna and either kill him there, or capture and bring him to Magadha to face a trial there?  Why would he have waited all those years?

And if the target wasn't Krishna, why not attack Mathura right then, when it was defenseless?  Was Pandu still the ruler of Hastinapur at the time Kansa was killed, and even if he was, was it likely that he'd have intervened in Mathura on Vasudev's behalf?

Jarasandh might have known kans died but at that time he did not know who has killed  kans it is only when jarasandh  two daughters asti and prapti reach his father jarasandh home and inform jarasandh how  krishna killed their husband kans then jarasandh decided to attack mathura

Asti  and prapti tell their father jarasandh  how they become widow  after when krishna and balram return from gurukul that is sandipini ashram which was situated in Ujjain

So it would take Asti & Prapti 64 days to go from Mathura to Rajagriha (today's Patna)?  That sounds long even if they went by a palanquin.  And if Jarasandha had troops in Mathura to prop up Kansa, that detail of who killed Kansa should have gotten to him even earlier

I used to wonder this too, but my reasoning is that he wanted to wait until the Yadavas were less hyper-vigilant and relaxed their arms. After Kans' death, the Yadavas would certainly have expected his supporters to attack them in either support or revenge, and jubilant from their victory over Kans, their collective strength would have been hard to defeat. After all, Kans' death was one of the few times that all the Yadavas were finally united. Jarasandh may have waited until the jubilance of Kans' death wore off a little and the Yadavas returned to their ways (bickering amongst each other) before he attacked. And is that not what happened? Once he did attack, the Yadavas did not agree with each other on the format to fight back with him. Some wanted to surrender, some wanted to fight, some wanted to run away and hide. This dissension was what Jarasandh was probably waiting for.

This explanation makes the most sense to me, both in the show and in the actual text.

Okay, in this serial, Jarasandha was depicted as encouraging Dhritarashtra to make Duryodhan his yuvraj.  Is that in any of the books the serial claims as its sources, or is it just a part of their wishful thinking of bunching together the enemies of both Krishna and the Pandavas?

Also, in the Rajasuya yagna, Duryodhan was depicted as declaring his support for Sishupala, and opposing (of all people) Bheeshma and Drona when they threatened Sishupala.  Is that there anywhere?  It doesn't make sense, b'cos in the Mahabharat, when Bhima, during his Rajasuya  conquests, approached Chedi, Sishupala, knowing that Bhima had killed Jarasandha, decided to try to win him over as a potential future ally against Krishna, and even accompanied him on some of his nearby conquests.  In fact, Sishupala's relations w/ the Pandavas were pretty good, until Krishna was given the place of honor at the yagna, which was where he lost it.  And given that friendship, and also the fact that Kunti and Shrutasharava were sisters, it's pretty likely that those 2 would  have had a strong alliance, as they in fact had, since Chedi was one of the Pandava allies at Kurukshetra.

Given all that, it's highly unlikely that Duryodhan would have stood up for Sishupala and against honoring Krishna, w/ whom he had no differences at the time (the story about his being enamored w/ Subhadra was not there in the MB, and in SB, Balarama merely thought about it, but never discussed it w/ Duryodhan)