Krishna, the most loved of all the forms of Vishnu, was not born in a palace or under a sacred tree. He was born in a prison, at midnight, on a night of pouring rain, to a mother who had already lost six children. Janmashtami, the eighth-day birthday, is kept on the eighth night of the dark fortnight of the month of Bhadrapada, usually in August or September, at the height of the monsoon. Devotees fast through the day, fill the evening with song, and wait for the clock to reach twelve.
The story is told in the tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana, and most Hindu children can recite it before they can read.
Kamsa and the voice from the sky
Kamsa, king of Mathura on the Yamuna river, was a tyrant who had imprisoned his own father to take the throne. He had one soft spot: his sister Devaki. On the day of her wedding to Vasudeva, Kamsa himself drove the bridal chariot, and as it set out a voice from the sky announced that Devaki's eighth child would be the death of him.
Kamsa drew his sword to kill his sister on the spot. Vasudeva stopped him with a bargain: let her live, and he would hand over every child she bore. Kamsa agreed, then locked the couple in a cell and killed each child as it was born. Six infants died that way. The seventh, Balarama, was saved by a miracle: the unborn child was moved from Devaki's womb to that of Rohini, Vasudeva's other wife, living safely across the river. Then Devaki conceived for the eighth time, and the guards were doubled.
The midnight birth and the crossing of the Yamuna
On the eighth night of the dark fortnight, as the Rohini star rose, the child was born. The Bhagavata describes the rivers running clear, the wind falling still, and a light appearing in the cell. For a moment the infant showed himself as Vishnu, four-armed, holding conch, discus, mace and lotus. Then he became an ordinary newborn, and his parents' fear came rushing back.
The chains fell from Vasudeva's wrists. The iron doors swung open. The guards slept where they stood. Vasudeva placed the baby in a winnowing basket, lifted it onto his head and walked out of the prison into a storm.
The Yamuna was in flood. Vasudeva walked into it anyway, and the water rose to his chest, his neck, and then, as the story is always told, rose to touch the feet of the child and fell back, parting for him. Above the basket the great serpent Shesha spread his hoods as an umbrella against the rain.
On the far bank was Gokul, a village of cowherds, where Nanda and his wife Yashoda had that same night had a baby girl, and everyone was asleep. Vasudeva laid his son beside Yashoda, lifted her daughter, and walked back through the river to the prison, where the doors closed behind him and the chains fastened themselves.
In the morning Kamsa came for the eighth child, found a girl, and raised her to dash her against the stone. She slipped from his hands, rose into the air and revealed herself as the goddess Yogamaya: the one who would kill him, she said, was already born and somewhere else. In time Krishna returned to Mathura and did what the voice from the sky had promised.
How the night is kept
Because the birth was at midnight, the festival's climax comes in the small hours. Most devotees fast from sunrise, some taking only fruit and water, and spend the day decorating the shrine and cooking the offerings. Temples fill from evening with kirtan, devotional singing that builds as midnight approaches.
At twelve the conch is blown, bells are rung, and a small image of the infant Krishna, often called Bal Gopal or Laddu Gopal, is bathed in milk, curd, honey and water, dressed in new clothes, laid in a tiny cradle, the jhula, and rocked while the congregation sings lullabies. The cry that goes up is Nand ke anand bhayo, jai Kanhaiya Lal ki: "Joy has come to Nanda's house; victory to the darling boy." The fast is broken with prasad, the blessed food: butter and sugar crystals, which he was always stealing, and panjiri, a roasted mixture of flour or coriander seed with ghee, sugar and nuts.
Jhanki and Dahi Handi
In north Indian homes and temples the days before Janmashtami are spent building a jhanki, a tableau of the birth story. A cardboard prison, a strip of blue cloth for the Yamuna, a doll of Vasudeva with a basket on his head, a paper serpent, a cowshed with a cradle. Children make the figures, and the result, however lopsided, teaches the story by hand.
In Maharashtra and Gujarat the day after Janmashtami belongs to Dahi Handi, "the pot of curd". A clay pot filled with curd, butter and money is hung high across a street, and teams of young men called Govindas build human pyramids to reach it. When the top boy smashes the pot, the curd pours down on everyone below.
The game re-enacts the most famous episode of Krishna's childhood, when the women of Gokul hung their butter pots from the ceiling and he and his friends stacked themselves up and got at them anyway. The makhan chor, the butter thief, is the form of Krishna that Hindus find easiest to love, because a god who steals butter is a god who wants to be close to us.
What the birth story means
Krishna is born in a prison, in darkness, at the worst hour of the night, to parents who have no power at all. The divine does not wait for conditions to be favourable; it arrives where the need is greatest. The chains that fall from Vasudeva's wrists are the chains of fear; the doors that open are the ones we had assumed were locked; the guards who sleep are the habits of mind that keep us from acting. The flooded river is every obstacle that looks impassable until you have walked into it, and the serpent's hood is the protection that was there all along.
The swap matters too. Krishna is raised by cowherds who are not his birth parents, and the Bhagavata gives Yashoda, who nursed him, as much honour as Devaki, who bore him. The god chooses to be loved as a child, and vatsalya, parental tenderness, becomes a form of worship. That is why on Janmashtami the deity is a baby in a cradle, not a king on a throne.
Krishna himself, speaking in the Bhagavad Gita, gives the reason for his birth:
Whenever there is a decline of dharma and a rise of adharma, O Bharata, then I send forth myself. For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of dharma, I come into being age after age.
Celebrating at home
- Fast through the day as you are able, and plan a midnight meal of something simple and sweet.
- Build a jhanki with the children, however modest, and tell the story as you go.
- Set up a cradle, even a decorated shoebox, with a small image of baby Krishna in it.
- At midnight, bathe the image, dress it, rock the cradle and sing. One lullaby is enough.
- The next morning, share butter and sugar with the neighbours.
The god who came at midnight in a prison cell asks for very little: that you stay awake for him, and that you let yourself be glad.