On the Secondary Nature of Kaṁsa’s "Massacre of the Innocents" in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa
The Herod-like "massacre of the innocents" of infants ten days old and younger contemplated by Kaṁsa and his ministers in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa book 10, is not, as Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarker and other early Indologists suggested, due to the influence of Christianity. But it is a later emb...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Univ.
2020
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| In: |
Journal of Hindu-Christian studies
Year: 2020, Volume: 33, Pages: 1-15 |
| IxTheo Classification: | BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | The Herod-like "massacre of the innocents" of infants ten days old and younger contemplated by Kaṁsa and his ministers in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa book 10, is not, as Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarker and other early Indologists suggested, due to the influence of Christianity. But it is a later embellishment on the developing story of Kaṁsa’s consultation with his ministers. This is seen in the fact that (1) the consultation itself is absent from earlier accounts of the story, (2) alternate accounts where the killing of children is mentioned do not include the detail about targeting infants ten days old and younger, and (3) the decisions of the consultation are not carried out in any systematic way in what follows in the larger narrative, which turns out to derive its shape instead from a conversation between Viṣṇu and the sage Nārada included in the Harivaṃśa but left out of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. The story of Kaṁsa’s consultation with his ministers originally arose as a response to the goddess telling him that his killer had already been born, a detail not present in certain early accounts. It also serves in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as a plot-enhancement innovation extending the shadow of Kaṁsa’s menacing presence over the entire period of Kṛṣṇa’s youth. |
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| ISSN: | 2164-6279 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Hindu-Christian studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1772 |