The tradition of Krishna appears to be an amalgamation of several independent deities of ancient India, the earliest of whom to be attested being
Vāsudeva. Vāsudeva was a hero-god of the tribe of the
Vrishnis, belonging to the
Vrishni heroes, whose worship is attested from the 5th–6th century BCE in the writings of
Pāṇini, and from the 2nd century BCE in epigraphy with the
Heliodorus pillar. The deities displayed on the coins appear to be
Saṃkarṣaṇa-
Balarama with attributes consisting of the
gada mace and the
plow, and Vāsudeva-Krishna with attributes of the
shankha (conch) and the
sudarshana chakra wheel. According to
Bopearachchi, the
headdress of the deity is actually a misrepresentation of a shaft with a half-moon parasol on top (
chattra). The
Heliodorus Pillar, a stone pillar with a
Brahmi script inscription, was discovered by colonial era archaeologists in Besnagar (
Vidisha, in the central Indian state of
Madhya Pradesh). Based on the internal evidence of the inscription, it has been dated to between 125 and 100BCE and is now known after
Heliodorus – an
Indo-Greek who served as an ambassador of the Greek king
Antialcidas to a regional Indian king, Kasiputra
Bhagabhadra. The Heliodorus pillar site was fully excavated by archaeologists in the 1960s. The effort revealed the brick foundations of a much larger ancient elliptical temple complex with a sanctum,
mandapas, and seven additional pillars. The Heliodorus pillar inscriptions and the temple are among the earliest known evidence of Krishna-Vasudeva devotion and
Vaishnavism in ancient India. and Krishna with their attributes at
Chilas. The
Kharoshthi inscription nearby reads
Rama [kri]ṣa. 1st century CE. However, historians argue that the Hathibada-Ghosundi inscription is associated with
Jainism, as it explicitly mentions the
Jina. A
Mora stone slab found at the Mathura-Vrindavan archaeological site in
Uttar Pradesh, held now in the
Mathura Museum, has a Brahmi inscription. It is dated to the 1stcenturyCE and mentions the five
Vrishni heroes, otherwise known as Saṃkarṣaṇa, Vāsudeva,
Pradyumna,
Aniruddha, and
Samba. The inscriptional record for
Vāsudeva starts in the 2nd century BCE with the coinage of Agathocles and the Heliodorus pillar, but the name of Krishna appears rather later in epigraphy. At the
Chilas II archaeological site dated to the first half of the 1st-century CE in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, are engraved two males, along with many Buddhist images nearby. The larger of the two males held a plough and club in his two hands. The artwork also has an inscription with it in
Kharosthi script, which has been deciphered by scholars as
Rama-Krsna, and interpreted as an ancient depiction of the two brothers, Balarama and Krishna. The first known depiction of the life of Krishna himself comes relatively late, with
a relief found in
Mathura, and dated to the 1st–2nd century CE. This fragment seems to show
Vasudeva, Krishna's father, carrying baby Krishna in a basket across the
Yamuna. Krishna is central to many of the main stories of the epic. The eighteen chapters of the sixth book (
Bhishma Parva) of the epic that constitute the
Bhagavad Gita contain the advice of Krishna to
Arjuna on the battlefield. During the ancient times that the
Bhagavad Gita was composed in, Krishna was widely seen as an avatar of Vishnu rather than an individual
deity, yet he was immensely powerful and almost everything in the universe other than Vishnu was "somehow present in the body of Krishna". Krishna had "no beginning or end", "fill[ed] space", and every god but Vishnu was seen as ultimately him, including
Brahma, "storm gods, sun gods, bright gods", light gods, "and gods of ritual."
Other sources The
Chandogya Upanishad (verse III.xvii.6) mentions Krishna in
Krishnaya Devakiputraya as a student of the sage Ghora of the Angirasa family. Ghora is identified with
Neminatha, the twenty-second
tirthankara in
Jainism, by some scholars. This phrase, which means "To Krishna the son of
Devaki", has been mentioned by scholars such as
Max Müller as a potential source of fables and Vedic lore about Krishna in the
Mahabharata and other ancient literature only potential because this verse could have been interpolated into the text, These doubts are supported by the fact that the much later age
Sandilya Bhakti Sutras, a treatise on Krishna, cites later age compilations such as the
Narayana Upanishad but never cites this verse of the Chandogya Upanishad. Other scholars disagree that the Krishna mentioned along with
Devaki in the ancient Upanishad is unrelated to the later Hindu god of the
Bhagavad Gita fame.{{ For example, Archer states that the coincidence of the two names appearing together in the same Upanishad verse cannot be dismissed easily.
Yāska's
Nirukta, an etymological dictionary published around the 6thcenturyBCE, contains a reference to the Shyamantaka jewel in the possession of
Akrura, a motif from the well-known Puranic story about Krishna.
Shatapatha Brahmana and
Aitareya-Aranyaka associate Krishna with his Vrishni origins. In
Ashṭādhyāyī, authored by the
ancient grammarian
Pāṇini (probably belonged to the 5th or 6thcenturyBCE),
Vāsudeva and
Arjuna, as recipients of worship, are referred to together in the same
sutra. dancing, 14thcenturyCE
Chola sculpture,
Tamil Nadu, in the
Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Megasthenes, a Greek ethnographer and an ambassador of
Seleucus I to the court of
Chandragupta Maurya towards the end of 4thcenturyBCE, made reference to
Herakles in his famous work
Indica. This text is now lost to history, but was quoted in secondary literature by later Greeks such as
Arrian,
Diodorus, and
Strabo. According to these texts, Megasthenes mentioned that the Sourasenoi tribe of India, who worshipped Herakles, had two major cities named Methora and Kleisobora, and a navigable river named the Jobares. According to
Edwin Bryant, a professor of Indian religions known for his publications on Krishna, "there is little doubt that the Sourasenoi refers to the Shurasenas, a branch of the
Yadu dynasty to which Krishna belonged". The word Herakles, states Bryant, is likely a Greek phonetic equivalent of Hari-Krishna, as is Methora of Mathura, Kleisobora of Krishnapura, and the Jobares of
Jamuna. Later, when
Alexander the Great launched his campaign in the northwest
Indian subcontinent, his associates recalled that the soldiers of
Porus were carrying an image of Herakles. The Buddhist
Pali canon and the Ghata-Jâtaka (No. 454)
polemically mention the devotees of Vâsudeva and Baladeva. These texts have many peculiarities and may be a garbled and confused version of the Krishna legends. The texts of
Jainism mention these tales as well, also with many peculiarities and different versions, in their legends about
Tirthankaras. This inclusion of Krishna-related legends in ancient
Buddhist and Jaina literature suggests that Krishna theology was existent and important in the religious of
ancient India. The ancient Sanskrit grammarian
Patanjali in his
Mahabhashya makes several references to Krishna and his associates found in later Indian texts. In his commentary on Pāṇini's verse 3.1.26, he also uses the word
Kamsavadha or the "killing of Kamsa", an important part of the legends surrounding Krishna.
Puranas Many
Puranas tell Krishna's life story or some highlights from it. Two Puranas, the
Bhagavata Purana and the
Vishnu Purana, contain the most elaborate telling of Krishna's story, but the life stories of Krishna in these and other texts vary, and contain significant inconsistencies. The
Bhagavata Purana consists of twelve books subdivided into 332chapters, with a cumulative total of between 16,000 and 18,000 verses depending on the version. The tenth book of the text, which contains about 4,000 verses (~25%) and is dedicated to legends about Krishna, has been the most popular and widely studied part of this text. == Iconography ==