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The Childhood Exploits of Kṛṣṇa
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in Prakrit in the subsequent centuries, though most of them are now lost to us. The Jain tradition is largely dependent upon the Vedic-Brahmanic tradition for the Kṛṣṇa-carita and for the Mahabharata narrative, of which the former formed a part. But it treats Kṛṣṇa as a royal hero of extraordinary prowess, and not as a supreme divine being that had assumed the human form5. One of the sources of the Apabhramśa poet Svayambhu was Jinasena's Harivaṁŝapurāṇa (784 A. D.) in Sanskrit. Cantos 4 to 8 of Svayambhu's Riṭṭhaṇemicariya in Apabhramśa deal with Kṛṣṇa's early life (from his birth to the founding of Dvārāvati). In the fifth canto are narrated various childhood exploits of Kṛṣṇa (killing etc. of Putana, Sakata, Yamalarjuna, Keśin etc.). The first four sections (Kaḍavaka) of the sixth canto give a highly poetic description of Kaliya-mardana. Svayanbhū is assignable to the last quarter of the ninth century.5
Ratan Parimoo has shown that description and representation of Kṛṣṇa as leading the subdued Kaliya by a nose-cord that pierced the latter's nose was a North Indian tradition, as against the South Indian tradition preserved in Jain literature. Some four hundred years earlier Jinasena's Harivamsa-puraṇa refers to Kālindyaṁ nāganāthanam (I 91), and about a hundred years thereafter Svayambhu's Harivams apuraṇa gives the same version of Kaliyadamana : Harivamsapurāna VI 3 9 refers to Kṛṣṇa piercing Kaliya's nose with a cord and then whirling him by holding that cord.
Puspadanta's Mahāpurāna (completed in 972 A.D.) is an Apabhramśa epic dealing with the lives of 63 Great Men of the Jain tradition. Its 85th and 89th cantos narrate Kṛṣṇa's early life. Following the Jain tradition (as represented by Jinasena's Harivamsapurāṇa), Puspadanta has poetically described various well-known exploits of Kṛṣṇa as also his pranks and his sports with the Gopis. As Alsdorf has pointed out,7 Puspadanta too refers to Kṛṣṇa's piercing Kaliya's nose with a cord 'natthiya-bhuy imgu', 89 20 3).
Among the numerous Prakrit and Apabhramśa poets cited by Svayambhu (about most of whom come to know only from him), there were three poets whose works had partly or wholly
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