The Night the Prison Opened

In Mathura, King Kamsa loved his cousin Devaki like a sister, and on the day she married Vasudeva he took the reins of their chariot himself to drive the bride home. As the wedding procession went through the streets, a voice spoke out of the empty sky.

"Fool," it said. "The eighth child of the woman you are driving will kill you."

Kamsa dropped the reins, seized Devaki by the hair and drew his sword. Vasudeva caught his arm. "She has done you no harm," he said. "Spare her, and I will bring you every child she bears, with my own hands."

Kamsa believed him, and let them go, but later he threw them both into prison and put chains on their feet. One by one, as Devaki's children were born, Kamsa took them and killed them. Six sons died. The seventh child was moved by Vishnu's power from Devaki's womb into the womb of Rohini, Vasudeva's other wife, who was living safely in Gokul, and he was born there as Balarama. The guards told Kamsa that Devaki had lost the child.

Then Devaki was with child for the eighth time, and she shone so brightly that Kamsa was afraid to look at her. He set more guards on the prison and waited.

The child came on the eighth night of the dark fortnight of Bhadrapada, at midnight, with the moon rising and the star Rohini in the sky. The rain was pouring down outside. In the prison cell a boy appeared before his parents with four arms, holding the conch, the discus, the mace and the lotus, wearing a yellow cloth and a jewel on his chest. Vasudeva and Devaki knew who he was, and bowed down, and begged him to hide that form from Kamsa. And as they watched, he became an ordinary baby.

"Take me to Gokul," he told his father, "to Nanda's house. Bring back the girl who has just been born to Yashoda."

At that moment the guards fell asleep where they stood. The chains dropped from Vasudeva's feet, and the great doors of the prison swung open by themselves. Vasudeva put the baby in a basket on his head and walked out into the storm.

The Yamuna was in flood, roaring and full of whirlpools. As Vasudeva stepped into it, the river drew aside and made a path for him, as the sea once made a path for Rama. Behind him the serpent Shesha rose and spread his hoods over the basket to keep off the rain.

In Gokul everyone was asleep. Vasudeva crept into Nanda's house, laid his son beside Yashoda, took up the baby girl who lay there, and carried her back the same way. When he was inside the prison again, the doors shut and the chains closed round his feet.

The baby girl cried, and the guards woke and ran to Kamsa. He came at once, tore the child from Devaki's arms, and swung her by the feet to dash her against a stone.

She slipped out of his hands and rose into the air. Above him she became the Goddess, with eight arms holding eight weapons, shining with garlands and jewels.

"Why kill me, fool?" she said. "The one who will kill you has been born somewhere else. Stop murdering children."

Then she was gone. In Gokul, in the morning, Nanda's house woke to the news of a son, and all the cowherds came with milk and butter and curd, and danced in the lanes, and threw curd over each other in their joy.

The Harivamsha begins the night earlier, before Krishna is born. When Vishnu decides to be born on earth to rid it of Kamsa, he goes down to the underworld, to the cave where Nidra lives, the goddess of sleep, who is his own power of illusion.

"Go to Gokul," he tells her, "and be born as the daughter of Yashoda, in the same night that I am born to Devaki. When Kamsa tries to kill you, you will escape him, and rise to heaven, and Indra will make you his sister. You will live on the Vindhya mountains, and people will worship you there with wine and meat, and you will kill the demons Shumbha and Nishumbha."

Nidra bows to him. "I will do it," she says, "and I will be your sister, and your devotees will call on me too." Then Vishnu goes to Devaki in her prison, and the gods come down from heaven unseen to sing his praise in the dark.

So the two are born on the same night, the god in Mathura and the goddess in Gokul. Nidra puts the guards and the whole of Gokul to sleep, so that Vasudeva can carry one child out and bring the other back. When Kamsa dashes the girl against the rock, she rises unharmed, takes her great form and laughs at him.

In the Harivamsha she becomes the goddess of the Vindhya hills, Vindhyavasini, whose temple still stands above the Ganga at Mirzapur. The night of Krishna's birth is, in this telling, her birth too.