Ishwa helper Reged: 03/03/02 Posts: 553

Re: Krsna's Wives [Re: SkyTigress] #14839 - 04/15/02 03:46 AM Edit Reply Quote

I'm not sure about the number of wifes, but the information you can gather in the Harivamsha, which is the appendix of the Mahabharata of roundabout 12.000 shlokas. Actually it doesn't belong to the proper epic. It is a later addition, more of sectarian Purana nature. There are a two queens of which I remember now names: 1. J�mbavatii, who was the daughter of J�mbavant. But actually this can never have been V�sudeva, because J�mbavant lived in the time of Ramachandra. He was the minister of Sugriiva. So the Krshna who was married to J�mbavatii was someone else. 2. Rukminii. I think she was the real and only queen of V�sudeva Krshna. She was mother of Pradyumna and grandmother of Aniruddha. I think that there were many Krshnas, and thus many wifes. I'm not sure about Krshna being a family or clan name. The character of Gop�la Krshna might be different from V�sudeva Krshna too, maybe also in time. Names can give sometimes an indication about a relative chronology: Names like Pradyumna, Aniruddha, Rukminii are more ancient than the name Gop�la. The ancient form of the word Gop�la is Gop� (which is the Vedic form, somewhat irregular form for a masculin gopa: the word 'go' combined with a verbal rootform 'p�' becomes normally in Sam�sa 'pa'). We can see a shift of the Yadu power from Mathur� to Dv�raka and back. This is an indication of three different periods. (pre-Sindhu-Sarasvatii, Sindhu-Sarasvatii and post-Sindhu-Sarasvatii?) Why there's mention of so many wifes? Maybe it is an astronomical indication, I don't know. R�dh� for instance is not mentioned in the older layers of Krshna mythology. In astronomical sense R�dh� is maybe the constellation Anur�dh�. or better, Krshna is Anur�dh� (menaing 'who follows R�dh�') and then R�dh� is the previous constellation. I leave this subject to someone more proficient with constellations and numbers.