Reading Diary B: Krishna’s story from Cradle Tales of Hinduism by Sister Nivedita.

For this week, I am reading Krishna’s story from Cradle Tales of Hinduism by Sister Nivedita.  One of my favorite stories from the reading is the story of Krishna returning to Mathura.  I found it interesting that if King Kansa was so worried about the prophecy why did he go and invite all the cowherds to a festival so that he could try to kill Krishna by wrestlers.  Also instead of out-right killing Krishna he instead tried to have him sneakily killed by one of the wrestlers.  Which I found odd because King Kansa was already known as an evil man and a tyrant so I do not think that the people of his kingdom would find it odd if he decided to just go and kill him.  Something else that I found interesting is that King Kansa challenged Krishna and Bolarama to wrestling because Krishna and Bolarama were skilled in wrestling.  In addition, the power of Krishna was well known so it might have been more beneficial if Krishna and Bolarama had been challenged in the ways of war that they had been able to learn because they were from the cowherds and not from the Vrishnas.  Finally, after King Kansa had realized that the crowd was supporting Krishna and Bolarama and the wrestlers were fleeing, it was odd that he tried to have all that Krishna held dear slain.  He knew that Krishna was going to defeat him so it was odd he made the situation worse instead of trying to change his ways and beg for mercy.

Krishna killing King Kansa (source: wikimedia)