Yasoda: Foster mother to Krishna

Yasoda: Foster Mother to Krishna

You all have heard of Krishna and his evil uncle, King Kansa, but not many of you have heard of Yasoda the foster-mother of Krishna. Yasoda is kind of an overlooked character in the story of Krishna. Do not underestimate Yasoda though. She raised Krishna and therefore probably has some juicy details that Krishna has been holding back on us. Well, guess what, loyal fans, you are in luck. We got a hold of Yasoda and you will not believe what we discovered.

The story of Krishna’s childhood has always been kind of unambiguous. Krishna never really got into great detail about it; he has been kind of known to beat around the bush a lot. Makes you wonder what he is hiding, doesn’t it? 

Well, let’s start from the beginning. Okay, so we know that Krishna escaped from the hands of his malicious uncle Kansa but we do not really know what happens after this. Good thing you have us, am I right? 

Here is what our source informed us. Even though Krishna was able to escape from Kansa’s prison, Kansa never gave up. He continued his search for Krishna. He went as far as killing innocent babies throughout his kingdom. It was one thing to kill Krishna’s siblings but now ALL of the babies of the land. It gets worse. Kansa killed these innocent babies though a vampire-nurse named Putana. Putana would appear in the form of a beautiful woman. With her beauty she would lure parents to give her their child to “cradle.” She would pretend to “cradle” the child by breastfeeding him. Here is the catch: her breast was filled with poison. Fortunately, when Putana was “cradling” Krishna, Krishna did not fall for the trick. He actually defeated Putana by revealing her true colors, which was pretty ugly. According to Yasoda, she was a grotesque-looking beast. There goes her modeling days.

I guess I can see why Krishna would want to keep this on the down low. He did not want everyone to know every embarrassing detail about his family drama. I mean there is nothing to be embarrassed about, Krishna. Everybody has that black seed in their family. I do not know about you but I think Kansa is kind of mentally ill but do not take my word for it -- I am no doctor.  

(Baby Krishna)

On a lighter note, Yasoda told us some cute stories about Krishna when he was a kid. When he was finally able to crawl on all-fours apparently he was quite the difficult child to keep up with. He would crawl into the mud and smear the mud all over his body. He would even eat the mud. Can you imagine that? The great God Krishna rolling around in the mud and eating it like some commoner! Another funny story about the God Krishna is that apparently when he was a kid he was quite the thief. Now that is hard to imagine. A God stealing. When he was a kid he would make his way into dairies and help himself. He would take cream, butter, and pretty much anything else of his pleasing. Looks like little Krishna was quite the rascal. 

Hopefully you enjoyed reading this because there will be lots more. Until next time, Insider readers!

Author's Note:

My story was based on The Divine Childhood . I wrote my whole story in a gossip tone. The majority of my story focused on Kansa and how he tried to kill Krishna by using the vampire- nurse.  I did not really change anything about this portion of the story except that I excluded the small detail of how Krishna killed the vampire nurse. He did not suck the poison but did suck the vampire- nurse’s soul, causing her to lose her beauty. I only mentioned a few of the stories concerning what kind of baby Krishna was. I did not include all of the stories about what kind of person Krishna was because I felt like it was not necessary. I wanted to focus on all of the scandals of Krishna so I felt like a lot of Krishna’s childhood stories were irrelevant to my theme. I just wanted to focus on what was considered “drama” or entertaining to readers. Some stories. I excluded from my story were the story of how he kicked a wagon which caused a demon to be killed, the story of how he a long rope attached to cart, or how Yasoda would punish Krishna when he was being bad.

"The Divine Childhood" by by Sister Nivedita, from  Cradle Tales of Hindiusm (1972). Web Source: Public Domain Edition

Storytelling for Week 7: The Prophecy

The prophecy

Long ago, there was a prophecy that said that a great ruler would be born, Krishna, and overthrow the current ruler. It was said that the child would be Devaki’s 8th child. The current ruler at the time was Kansa and Dekavi was his sister. He was a horrible king. He was wicked and oppressive. He cared for no one except for himself. Kansa’s servants informed him of this prophecy. This angered Kansa. Kansa feeling threatened decided to imprison his sister and her husband. The purpose of this was to allow Kansa to keep track of each time Dekavi gave birth.

Each time Devaki gave birth, Kansa was informed of it and each time he would consumed the child. This routine happened seven times. Devaki had enough of this. She was tired of seeing her children be eaten by her brother, Kansa. She decided to devise a plan with her husband. They formulated a plan to switch out her 8th child with a poisoned loaf of bread. Now King Kansa is not the brightest so they figured this plan would work and since they get a loaf of bread once a week, they figured they might as well use it. They got the poison from one of the kind servants who hated Kansa as well. Kansa did not treat his servants fairly. He mistreated them and took advantage of them. They would wrap the loaf of bread in cloth – like a child – and give it to Kansa and Kansa would consume it, thinking that it was the prophesized child, and die.

Devaki and her husband did not eat the week of the birth of their 8th child to save the loaf of bread. And on the day of the birth of their 8th child, Krishna, they hid him and replaced him with the loaf of bread before Kansa came to them.

Without looking twice, Kansa consumed the poisoned loaf of bread thinking that it was Krishna. The poison in the bread caused him to throw up the other seven children, Krishna’s siblings, he consumed. Then immediately after that he died. 

Devaki and her husband went off with Krishna and raised him. Krishna eventually grew up and became the great ruler that was prophesized. He got rid of all of the problems that Kansa made during his reign. He ended hunger, animosity between kingdoms, and the poor. The people respected and loved Krishna.

(Wrapped Bread)

Author's Note
This story was inspired by the story of The Birth of Krishna. I kept the main idea that the ruler Kansa would be overthrown by Krishna. I changed it up a little bit by intertwining it with the Greek story about Cronus who eats his children because he was scared that one of them would overthrow him. He instead accidentally eats a rock, thinking that it was one of his children, and dies.

"The Birth of Krishna" by Cradle Tales of Hindiusm (1907). Web Source: Public Domain Edition.

Reading Diary A: Another Mahabharata

    I really enjoyed reading about Krishna. One of the chapters that I enjoyed was the The Birth of Krishna, the Indian Christ- Child. In this chapter it explains how Krishna came to be. It begins with introducing Kansa, an evil ruler and brother to Krishna's mother Devaki. In the story there is a prophesy that Devaki's 8th child would be the downfall of Kansa. Knowing this Kansa decided to kill all of Devaki's children. He imprisoned Devaki and her husband and every time she gave birth to a child, he killed him/her. By the time of Devaki's 8th pregnancy a plan was devised. She would switch out her eighth child, which was the god Krishna, with another. This plan actually worked. Krishna was saved.
    Another story that I enjoyed was the story of Krishna in the Forests. I enjoyed this story because of the imagery. When describing the setting the author was very detailed. This helped in illustrating the setting. The story begins describing the forest and how peaceful it was for Krishna until he ran into a Demon-sheep. Krishna fought this demon and fortunately prevailed.
    The third story that I enjoyed was the story the Conquest of the Snake Kaliya. In this story there lives a snake that is terrorizing the people. The snake poisoned the water, killing everyone. Fortunately, Krishna was able to revive them with his tears. Krishna went on to get ride of the snake Kaliya. Krishnd defeated the snake Kaliya. Krishna did not kill the snake. Instead he allowed him to live one one condition -- he does not poison the waters.

(Krishna and snake Kaliya)

Google Timer Tech Tip

Some time management things I do for is that I try to not spend more than 2 hours at a time on just one specific subject. This is to avoid focusing too much on just one subject. I do not want to disregard other subjects. I do not currently use the Google Timer. This is actually the first time I have ever head about it. I do believe though that this timer might be something helpful for me in managing my computer time. It will help me not get distracted and only use the computer for school related reasons.

Storytelling for week 6: The forest

 The Forest

    The Sun god put the Pandavas and their wives in the forest. The god decreed that whatever food they gathered they had to set apart a portion of it for him. This angered the Pandavas and their wives. They worked so hard gathering their food. Most of the fruits in the forest were high up in the forest and plus there are hungry wild animals roaming all over the forest. The Pandavas and their wives hated their lives in the forest. They did not have a stable home, the rain was horrible, and they were not free to do anything. Their every move was watched by the Sung god.
    After twelve long years of living the forest, they decided to formulate a plan to escape the forest. They had enough of the forest and the Sun god. Now, the forest was bordered with walls. The walls were impossible to climb over; they were so high. Therefore they decided to build a tunnel. They worked on the tunnel during the night because the sun god was not there. He only came out during the day.
   When finally their tunnel was complete. They gathered all the food they had saved up and packed their belongings during the day for at night they were going go into the tunnel and escape the forest. When it was finally night time, they went to the tunnel only find that it was flooded with water from the rain from the day before. They had to reschedule their escape to another day when the flood went down.
   Finally the day came when the tunnel was acceptable to crawl through. While the Pandavas were walking toward the tunnel, the Sun god was following close behind. The Pandavas and their wives did not know this but the Sun god uses the creatures of the forest as spies. One of the creatures informed him of their plan of escape.
   One of them finally noticed that they were being followed by the Sun god and informed the group. The leader of the group offered himself as a sacrifice. He would run off and distract the Sun god so that the others could escape. The group had no other choice but follow through with this plan. The leader ran towards the Sun god and the rest of the group escaped.




Author's Note:
This story was based on the story of Life in the Forest. I kept the whole concept that the forest is a horrible place to live in because of the wild animals and bad weather. I wanted the story to be a little more adventurous so I made it a story about an escape, sacrifice, and courage.












"Life in the Forest" by Indian Myth and Legend (1913). Web Source: Public Domain Edition.

Reading Diary B: public domain Mahabharata

    Although I did not enjoy this portion of this week's reading as much as the first there were still some chapters that stood out to me. One chapter that I enjoyed was Ashwatthama's Jewel. In this chapter, Draupadi grieves for the death of her brother and her five sons. In her grief she requests the head of AShwawtthaman. In place of his head she will accept a jewel of his. Apparently the jewel that he has is just as precious as his life is to him. Arjuna found Ashwatthamann and took the jewel from him and gave it to Draupadi.
   Another chapter that I though was interesting was the Horse Sacrifice. In this chapter, a horse is sacrificed. Before sacrificing the horse, they had to determine if it was pure. This did this by pressing its ear and if milk flowed out of it, it means that it is indeed pure. The animal has to pure in order to be considered good enough for the gods. Bhima began the sacrifice by severing its head. To further determine that the animal was pure the inspected the insides of the horse. A bright lite appeared inside the animal; this means that the animal is indeed pure and is good enough for the god Vishnu.
    The third chapter that I though was interesting was Death of Krishna.In this chapter, the people were drinking and began to fight. Fathers were killing sons and sons were killing fathers. Krishna was trying to fight the rebels but died upon leaving the city. He was mistaken for a gazelle by a hunter and was shot.

(Death of Krishna)

Reading Diary A: Mahabharata public domain

    I really enjoyed this portion of the public domain Mahabharata. One of the stories I enjoyed was the first one, which was Life in the Forest. In this chapter, the writer introduces what it is like living in the forest to the reader. He does so by describing what kinds of foods they eat. They ate fruits, roots, and produce. It is pretty much what you would expect. For twelves years Pandavas and his wife Draupadi live in the forest -- living minimally and simply. Whatever food they obtained, they had to share a portion of it with the holy men. Although their live was simple, their home was pleasant. They were surrounded by fruits and flowers. I wished they would have included a picture in color depicting the abundance of the forest though.
    Another chapter that I enjoyed was Krishna's Visit. In this portion of the reading Krishna visits Draupadi. Draupadi uses this opportunity to complain to Krishna. She complains about her husband to Krishna. She accuses her husband of not caring about her. Her husband Pandavas saw her afflicted but did not do anything to save her. Krishna comforts her and promises her that she will be the queen over kings.
    I chose the image below because I really felt like if fit into the story of Krishna’s Visit. Not only is it a beautiful picture but it really captures the relationship between Krishna and Draupadi. It shos Draupadi confiding in Krishna and Krishna offering advise to Draupadi.

(Draupadi and Krishna)