Soundings from the Rubbish Stream: Krishna as Virgin Born Crucified Savior: Product of Western Ignorance or Hindu Belief?

The Rubbish Stream: A wide flowing river of nonsense about comparative religion based in misunderstandings and wrong ideas Europeans had in the 18th century, before the texts and even the langages needed to understand other people's religions were available or understood. Eventually languages were learned, texts studied and old misunderstandings jettisoned and replaced with right ones, except in certain circles that just kept uncriticaly reasserting the old, long debunked misunderstandings, year after year, decade after decade, century after century.
 

Subject: The Claim that Krishna was a Virgin Born, Crucified Savior is a 19th century Western invention that continues to be circulated by ignorant, intellectually lazy people who've never bothered to read the classic Hindu texts on the subject most of which are now readily available in English.

Let's begin:

Key Classical Indian Sources for the Stories of Krishna’s Life: Mahabharata (= M, c. 300 BC- c. 300 AD), Harivamsha (= H c. 450 AD), Vishnu Purana (= VP c. 400-500 AD), Bhagavata Purana (= BP, c. 950 AD).[1] The most influential telling is the last mentioned one, the BP.


Common False Claims: (1) Krishna was born of the virgin Devaki / Devaka /Yasoda (2) on December 25th and was (3) crucified (4) between two thieves, (5) for our sins, [2] (6) rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. (7) That he was born/died c. 1200 BC.

The Real Story:

(Answer to false claim 1) Krishna was the 8th son of Vasudeva and Devaki. The name of their first son was Kirtiman.[3] The BP credits the pregnancy to “mental transmission” [4] through the mind of Vasudeva into the womb of Devaki. That detail is from a late source (c. 950 AD), does not really represent a virgin birth, since Devaki was not a virgin, and is not present in the earlier accounts of Krishna’s birth in the H (c. 450 AD) and VP (c. 400-500 AD). The names Devaka (used by Christopher Hitchen’s and the source he plagiarized [5]) and Yasoda, used by Kersey Graves [6]) are errors deriving from a basic ignorance of the story.

(Answer to false claim 2) The celebration of Krishna’s birthday is one of the most prominent festivals in India, which takes place in the late summer or early fall (Bhadra in the North of India, Shravana in the South). [7]  The idea that that his birthday was celebrated on December 25 derives from no other source than the ignorant and/or dishonest English-speaking “Freethinkers” who falsely claimed that Shravana “answers to our December.”  [8]

(Answer to flse claim 3) Krishna was not crucified. He died when the hunter Jara shot him in the sole of his foot. In most stories it was said to be an accident, [9] in one, that Jara was actually a demon getting revenge for being killed by Krishna in a previous life. [10]  The reason Krishna died the way he did was that, with the exception of the soles of his feet, his body was invincible due to a boon granted him by the sage Durvāsas [11]

(Answer to false claim 4) Crucified between two thieves: nothing like that at all in the authentic Hindu sources.

(Answer to false claim 5) Krishna died not for our sins but in fulfillment of two curses made against him and his clan: (i) The curse of the widow Gandhari, for not stopping the battle in which her husband Dhritarashtra died, [12] and (ii) The curse of the Brahmanas, for a stunt Krishna’s son, Samba, played on some holy men. [13] (6) Krishna’s spirit does ascend, but his body remains and is cremated [14] 

(Answer to false claim 6) The date 1200 BC as the time of Krishna’s birth/death, in not correct. [15] Traditionally Krishna’s death took place just around 3100 BC marking the beginning of the Age of Kali.[16]

An ad for the fall celebration of Krishna's Birthday in September 4 and 5, 2015.

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Notes

1. I am following the dates given in Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).
2. Kersey Graves, The Worlds Sixteen Crucified Saviors (4th ed. rev. and enl.; Boston: Colby and Rich, 1876), 140.
3. BP 10.1.56-57, p. 13.
4. BP 10.2.17, 10.2.16-18,
5. Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York, Boston: Twelve, 2007), 23. Hitchens source is an atheist book published in the 1930s, entitled Essays on Freethinking, by Chapman Cohen (1868-1954). Hitchens actually reprints the portion he plagiarized in the collection The Portable Atheist (2007).
6. Kersey Graves, Sixteen Crucified Saviors, 50, Graves simply gets the characters mixed up.
7. See, e.g., “Krishna Jayanti: Birthday of the God of Divine Love,” Hinduism Today (April, May, June 2010): 30; John Stratton Hawley, At Play with Krishna: Pilgrimage Dramas from Bridavan (with Shrivatsa Goswami; Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992 [orig. ed. Princeton University Press, 1981]): 62.
8. Graves, Sixteen Crucified Saviors, 69.
9. M 16:4 (Mausala-parvan, “Book of the Clubs”); VP 5:37, and in the BP 11.30.27-40.
10 Vettam Mani, Purāṇic Encyclopedia (Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass, 1975), 429.
11. M 13:159 (Anusasana Parva “Book of Instructions”), M 16:4 (Mausala-parvan, “Book of the Clubs”).
12. M 11:25 (Sitrī-parva “Book of the Women”).
13. M 16:3 (Mausala-parva, “Book of the Clubs”); VP, 5:37; BP 11.5.2-23 & 11.30.33.
14. M 1:2 (Adi-parva, “Book of the Beginning”); M 16:7 (Mausala-parva, “Book of the Clubs”); VP 5.38; BP 11.30.2.
15. The claim appears, e.g., in Graves, Sixteen Crucified Saviors, 65. It was, however, at one time though to be correct: See, e.g., James Tod, “On the Religious Establishments of Méwar,” Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2.1 (1829): 299.
16. “Kali Yuga,” in Roshen Dalal, Hinduism: An Alphabetical Guide (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2010), 187.