The Mountain on One Hand

The rains were over. The lakes were full and clear, the lotus was open, and the sky at night was thick with stars. In the cowherd camp of Vraja everyone was busy getting ready for a sacrifice.

Krishna went to the elders and asked, as if he were only curious, what festival this was.

Nanda, his foster father, explained. "It is for Indra. He is lord of the clouds. He sends the rain, the rain brings the grass and the grain, and the grass feeds the cows and gives us milk. Kings offer to him when the rains end, and so do we."

Krishna heard him out and then argued.

"Father, we are not farmers and we are not traders. We live in the forest. Cows are our living and cows are our gods. A farmer worships his fields, a trader his trade. Whoever lives by one thing and worships another does not do well in this world or the next. We have no doors and no walls. We go where we like in our wagons. The hills are our boundary, and the spirits of the hills walk these woods in any shape they please. Displease them and they come as lions. What have we to do with Indra? Our gods are the cattle and the mountain."

He told them what to do instead. Gather all the milk in the camp. Make offerings to Govardhan, the mountain. Feed the brahmins and anyone else who comes. Then put garlands of autumn flowers on the cows and walk round them.

"Do this," he said, "and you will have the favour of the mountain, and of the cattle, and mine."

The cowherds' faces lit up. "Well said, child. We will do exactly that."

So they did. They brought curds and milk and meat to the mountain, fed hundreds and thousands of guests, and walked round their cows and bulls, which bellowed like thunder. And on the summit of Govardhan a figure appeared and said, "I am the mountain," and ate everything they had brought. It was Krishna. At the same moment, in his own shape, Krishna was climbing the hill with the cowherds and bowing down to the mountain, which was also himself.

Indra was furious. He called the clouds of the world's ending.

"The fool Nanda has stopped my offerings, because he trusts in Krishna. Go and ruin the cattle they live by. I will ride behind you on my elephant."

The storm came down. Earth and sky and the four directions ran together in rain. The cows shrank into themselves or died; some covered their calves with their sides, and some saw their calves swept away.

Krishna looked at Gokula and understood whose work this was. He pulled Govardhan up out of the ground and held it over the camp on one hand, like an umbrella.

"The mountain is up. Come under it quickly, and do not be afraid it will fall."

Everyone came in, with their cattle, their wagons and their goods. For seven days and nights the rain fell, and for seven days and nights Krishna held the mountain. Then Indra called the clouds off. When the sky was clear, the cowherds went home, and Krishna put Govardhan back where it had stood.

Indra came down on Airavata to see him. He said plainly that he had sent the storm, and that he had come because the cows had asked him to. With water from a ewer he anointed Krishna, and gave him a name: Govinda, the Indra of the cows.

In the Bhagavata the boy asks sharper questions. Is this sacrifice laid down in scripture, he wants to know, or is it only the custom? Nanda says Indra gives the rain. Krishna says that what happens to each creature comes from its own deeds and its own nature, and the clouds rain because it is their nature to; what has Indra to do with it?

Then he asks for the feast. Take everything collected for Indra, he says, and cook. Sweet rice and soups, cakes baked and cakes fried, every dish that can be made from milk. Feed the priests, then everyone else, down to the dogs and the outcasts. Give the cows fresh grass. Then dress up, put on sandal paste, and walk round the cows and the fire and the hill.

They cooked, and the hill was fed. Krishna took a huge form no one had seen before and announced, "I am Govardhan!" and ate. Then, standing among the cowherds, he bowed to it with them. "Look," he said. "The hill has come in person to bless us."

Indra called Krishna a chattering child and sent clouds with hail. The cowherds ran to Krishna, and he lifted the hill with one hand as easily as a child picks up a mushroom.

"Mother, father, everyone, come under with the cows."

There was room for all of them. He stood there for seven days without food or sleep while they gazed at him, until Indra gave up.

In Braj this is the day after the new moon of Diwali. Families shape Govardhan out of cow dung in the courtyard and walk round it, and in the temples food is heaped into a mountain, dish after dish, for Krishna to eat again. They call it Annakut.