Krishna
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Krishna is the standard English spelling for the Great Spiritual Teacher of India, often described in Hindu terms as an Incarnation of Vishnu, and described in Bahá'í Prophetology as a Manifestation of God. His words form the background of the Bhagavad Gita, the "Song of God", which in station is perhaps the nearest equivalent in Hinduism to the Christian Gospels.
Early Life[edit]
As Krishna is supposed to have lived over three thousand years ago, substantiated evidence for His early life no longer exists. However, as with Jesus, He had to be hidden from danger at the hands of a jealous ruler. His early life story is greatly complicated by the composition, some considerable time after the revelation/composition of the Bhagavad Gita, of a long text about Krishna in His disguise, living as a somewhat playful cowherd in the forest. This alternative word picture of His early life is known as Krishna Govinda. Doubtless the author thought that he or she was performing a great service to Krishna, in imagining this lifestyle, but one result is that some Hindus no longer take Krishna seriously as a religious figure.
The Bhagavad Gita[edit]
The "Song of God" is set against a historical, or quasi-historical, backdrop, in which warfare has broken out between two rival factions of an extended ruling family. This story has become an epic poem (and more recently serialised on television) as the "Mahabharata". Krishna has become the charioteer of Prince Arjuna, who is bewailing the situation, and questions the righteousness of warfare, even when it was not his branch of the family which had behaved wrongly. The wise words of his charioteer reveal to Arjuna that he has the Supreme Lord present, in the person of Krishna, who proceeds to explain to him why his duty must be fulfilled.
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the more popular of the Hindu works of scripture, and is considered more recent in time than the Vedas or the Upanishads.
Theology[edit]
In references to Krishna, He is sometimes referred to as a "god". More frequently, He is referred to as an Incarnation of Vishnu. For the Bahá'í, such terms obfuscate the position. "Vishnu" is the personification of one of the attributes of God, and therefore to the more educated Hindu, being an "Incarnation of Vishnu" is much like the Bahá'í concept of the Manifestation of God. If Krishna is referred to as a "god", it ultimately amounts to the same thing, as every Hindu "god", when examined from a theological perspective, is again a manifestation of God's attributes.
Krishna in the sequence of Manifestations[edit]
Jamshid Fozdar presents evidence to suggest that the Buddha recognised three previous Buddhas/Manifestations in historical time. The third of these would have been Krishna. Krishna's predecessor would have been Ram(a). If we were to postulate that the next revelation of divine will to the Indian sub-continent in general (after that of "The" Buddha) was to be that of Bahá'u'lláh, this would explain the title of the promised "Fifth Buddha", which Bahá'ís sometimes claim applies to Bahá'u'lláh.
