Page 490 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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YASHODA AND KRISHNA

15th century
Indian, Karnataka
copper
height 33.3 (ijVs)
references: Los Angeles 1977, 12#-129; New York
1982-1983, 80-81; New York 1985, 33-34, no. 5
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Purchase, Lita Annenberg Hazen
Charitable Trust Gift, in honor of Cynthia and
Leon Bernard Polsky

Probably the last very great South Indian metal
sculpture, this deeply moving image of Yashoda
and her foster son, the God Krishna, crosses the
barrier that usually separates people from gods.
The sculptor understood and sympathized with
mothers and children and at the same time
revered the divine. Yashoda is shown as a flesh-
and-blood woman, probably observed from life,
while Krishna gracefully ascends from human
infancy to godliness. If his feet, legs, and left hand
indicate a sensitively observed naturalism, his face
conforms to the familiar South Indian typology
and proportion known from many less extraordi-
nary images.
The iconography is complex, demonstrating
that the lives of the Indian gods were even more
entangled than those of the Greeks. Here the
human warmth of the image is appropriate, for
Lord Krishna, whose name means dark, is the
most humanly accessible of the Hindu deities —a
god of youth who gradually emerged from ancient
sacred mystery and legend. Scholars believe that
in pre-Aryan times Krishna was worshiped by a
tribe that deified cows, for in Vedic literature
he is associated with cattle. In the Hindu epic Ma-
hdbhdrata (The Book of Wars), he is described
as a simple cowherd, one of whose wives is an
untouchable. In the Harivamsa (The Genealogy
of Hari) and the Bhagavad Gitd (The Song of
the Lord), Krishna is the eighth incarnation or
avatar of Vishnu, who took this form to slay the
tyrant Kamsa.
When Kamsa was warned that he would be
killed by one of the sons of Devaki, he ordered
that Devakfs first six children were to be mur-
dered at birth. But when Balarama, the seventh
son of Devaki and Vasudeva, was conceived,
Vishnu arranged for the fetus's miraculous trans-
fer to the womb of Rohini, Vasudeva's second
wife. When Devaki's eighth son, Krishna, was
born, Devaki and Vasudeva were imprisoned.
Vishnu arranged for another miracle: their chains
shattered, the guards fell asleep, and Vasudeva
carried the infant to Yashoda, wife of a cowherd,
for nursing. Protected by her husband, Nanda,
from Kamsa's murderous actions, Krishna grew
up in the sacred groves of Vrindavana, where he
developed the talents of the Divine Lover, s.c.w.

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