Born at Midnight: Krishna Comes Into the World

The birth of Krishna is one of the best-loved stories in Hindu tradition. Krishna, revered as an avatar — an earthly “descent” — of the god Vishnu, was born at midnight in a prison cell in Mathura, where a tyrant king held his parents captive. That same night his father carried him across the flooded Yamuna river to be raised in secret among cowherds. The story is celebrated every year at Janmashtami, the festival of Krishna’s birth. Here it is in order, with the names and terms explained, and with a note on where it comes from and how its versions differ.

The people in the story

• Kamsa — the ruler of Mathura, a city on the Yamuna in northern India. He had seized power from his own father, King Ugrasena.
• Devaki — a princess of Mathura and Kamsa’s cousin (her father Devaka was Ugrasena’s brother).
• Vasudeva — Devaki’s husband, a nobleman of the Yadava clan.
• Nanda and Yashoda — a prosperous cowherd chief and his wife, living across the river in Gokula (Gokul), a village of herders. Nanda was Vasudeva’s friend.
• Rohini — another of Vasudeva’s wives, who was sheltering in Nanda’s community.
• Yogamāyā — Vishnu’s own divine power of illusion, personified as a goddess, who plays a quiet but crucial part.

The prophecy

The trouble began on Devaki’s wedding day. Kamsa, who loved his cousin, was driving the chariot that carried the newly married couple when a voice spoke out of the sky: the eighth child of Devaki would be his death.

Kamsa drew his sword to kill Devaki on the spot. Vasudeva stopped him with a bargain: spare her, he said, and I will hand over every child she bears. Kamsa accepted.

Versions differ on what happened next. In many popular retellings Kamsa threw the couple into prison that very day. In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the fullest source, he at first let them go home; it was only later, after the sage Narada stirred up his fears, that he imprisoned Devaki and Vasudeva (and his own father, Ugrasena) and began killing Devaki’s children as they were born.

Kamsa had responded to the prophecy with the thorough practicality of a tyrant. Six children were born, and six times Devaki had brought a child into the world only for Kamsa to ensure it did not outlive its arrival.

The seventh pregnancy was different. The child was miraculously transferred to another womb before birth, saving him: according to the Bhāgavata, Yogamāyā moved the unborn baby from Devaki to Rohini in Gokula. That child was Balarama, Krishna’s elder brother, who is also called Saṅkarṣaṇa, “the one who was drawn out.” In Mathura it was given out that Devaki had miscarried. And now the eighth was coming.

The night of the birth

Tradition places the birth at midnight on the eighth day (aṣṭamī) of the dark half of the lunar month, under the star Rohini — which is why the festival is called Janmāṣṭamī, “the birth on the eighth.”

The Bhāgavata describes the whole world turning auspicious as the moment approached: rivers ran clear, lakes filled with lotuses, sacred fires burned brightly, and the gods gathered unseen and sang. Tellings of the story often add a storm raging over Mathura and a stillness at midnight, as if the cosmos was holding its breath.

In the prison, a child was born. He was dark as a rain cloud, with eyes like lotus flowers.

Here the Bhāgavata adds a detail that many popular retellings leave out. Devaki and Vasudeva did not first see an ordinary baby. They saw Vishnu himself, with four arms holding a conch, a discus, a mace and a lotus, dressed in yellow and wearing a jewelled crown. Recognising who had come, they fell into worship and praised him. Devaki, frightened of what Kamsa would do, begged him to hide this form. He did, becoming an ordinary newborn — and he told Vasudeva what to do next.

The crossing of the Yamuna

At that moment Yogamāyā cast a deep sleep over the guards and over everyone in Mathura. The heavy doors of the prison, bolted and barred, opened by themselves. In many tellings the chains fall from Vasudeva’s wrists.

Vasudeva picked up his son, wrapped him against the storm, and walked out of the prison into the night.

The Yamuna river between Mathura and Gokula was in monsoon flood, fast and deep. An ordinary man with an infant would not have attempted it. Vasudeva stepped in. The Bhāgavata says the river made way for him, just as the ocean once made way for Rama on his march to Lanka. Behind him came Shesha (Śeṣa), the great many-headed serpent on whom Vishnu rests, spreading his hoods over father and child like an umbrella against the rain.

Popular tradition adds a much-loved image: the river rose, not to stop him, but to touch the feet of the child he carried, and once it had done so it sank back and let him through. This detail is not in the Bhāgavata’s account, but it is widely told, sung and painted.

The exchange in Gokula

On the other bank stood Nanda’s house. That same night Yashoda had given birth to a daughter — who was in fact Yogamāyā herself, born at Vishnu’s bidding. Yashoda, exhausted and held in the goddess’s sleep, did not even know whether she had borne a boy or a girl.

Vasudeva placed his son beside Yashoda. He picked up her daughter, carried her back across the Yamuna, and laid her beside Devaki. Then he returned to his cell, fastened the fetters on himself again, and the doors closed as before. No one had seen anything.

What Kamsa found

The newborn girl began to cry. The guards woke and ran to tell Kamsa that Devaki’s child had been born. He rushed to the prison. Devaki pleaded with him: this is only a girl, she cannot harm you — let me keep this one child. Kamsa tore the baby from her arms and tried to dash her against a stone.

The girl slipped from his grasp and rose into the sky. There she appeared as the Goddess, with eight arms bearing weapons, and told Kamsa that his death was elsewhere: the one who would slay him had already been born, and was safe.

In the Bhāgavata, Kamsa is shaken enough to show a rare moment of remorse. He releases Devaki and Vasudeva, begs their forgiveness and speaks of fate. But when his ministers counsel him to hunt down every newborn in the land, he agrees — the beginning of the attacks on the infant Krishna that follow, starting with the demoness Putana.

Many shrines honour the goddess of this episode. She is widely identified with Vindhyavasini, the goddess of the Vindhya hills, and some traditions say that after leaving Kamsa she made her home there.

A new son in Gokula

In Gokula, Yashoda woke to find a dark, lotus-eyed boy beside her. She believed him to be her own child, and so did everyone else. What she felt was not the confusion of a practical woman finding an unexplained infant but a love so complete it felt like memory rather than meeting. Nanda, overjoyed at the birth of a son, held a great celebration the next day, giving away cows and gifts to the whole village. This festival, Nandotsava, is still kept the day after Janmashtami in many places.

The name

According to the Bhāgavata, the boy was not named by Yashoda but by Garga, the family priest of the Yadavas, who came to Nanda’s house and performed the naming ceremony quietly in the cowshed so that Kamsa would not hear of it. He named the elder boy Balarama and the younger one Krishna.

The Sanskrit word kṛṣṇa means dark, or dark blue-black, the colour of a rain cloud. Devotional tradition also connects the name with the verb root kṛṣ, “to draw” or “to pull,” and so reads it as the “all-attractive” one who draws everything toward himself. That second meaning is an interpretation rather than the plain dictionary sense, but it expresses how devotees experience him. In the story, that quality was already present in the prison cell, in the flooding river and in the sleeping guards.

Where the story comes from

• Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Book 10. The tenth book, devoted to Krishna’s life, tells the story in its opening chapters: the prophecy and the killing of the first children, the moving of Balarama, the birth and the crossing, and Kamsa’s encounter with the goddess.
• Viṣṇu Purāṇa and Harivaṃśa. Both tell the same core story in their own words; details vary.
• Later retellings. Regional poetry, song, drama and popular devotional books added much-loved details, such as the Yamuna rising to touch the baby’s feet and the dramatic storm.

What the story is often taken to mean

• God comes where he is least expected. Devotees often point out that the divine chooses to be born not in a palace but in a prison, among people who have suffered most.
• Fear cannot hold what is meant to be free. Sleeping guards, opening doors and loosened chains are commonly read as signs that no human power can finally imprison grace. Some teachers read them inwardly too, as the soul’s bonds loosening when the divine is “born” within.
• Love as well as power. The story moves from Krishna’s majestic four-armed form to an ordinary baby in a cowherd’s house. Many traditions, especially devotional (bhakti) ones, treasure this: God allows himself to be loved as a child, not only worshipped as a king.
• Two sets of parents. Devaki and Vasudeva gave birth to Krishna; Yashoda and Nanda raised him. Devotional poetry dwells on both kinds of love, and on the sacrifice of giving a child away to keep him safe.

Janmashtami and Mathura

At Janmashtami, many Hindus fast through the day and keep vigil until midnight, the hour of Krishna’s birth, when temples ring bells, sing, and bathe and dress an image of the infant Krishna, often laid in a small cradle. In Maharashtra and elsewhere, the day after is marked by the dahi handi, in which teams form human pyramids to break a pot of curd hung high above the street — a nod to the butter-stealing boy Krishna would grow into. In Mathura, a temple complex stands at the site traditionally revered as Krishna’s birthplace, and the towns of Gokul and Vrindavan nearby are major pilgrimage places.

Read on AdiVeda

• The Divine Thief: Krishna and the Butter — Krishna’s childhood in Yashoda’s house.
• The Boy Who Danced on the Serpent’s Heads — a later adventure from the same years.
• Nandakumārāṣṭakam — a hymn to Krishna as Nanda’s son.
• Vindhyeshwari Stotram — a hymn to the goddess of the Vindhya hills.
• Krishna reading texts — stotras, ashtakams and mantras for Krishna.