Jainism

Author(s): N R Guseva
Publisher: Sindu Publications P L

Page 31

THE RISE OF REFORMATORY
people of Krishna-did not belong to Aryans.
Krishna's origin is directly from the branch of Satvatas, andhaka-vrishni. We shall have ground to consider andhakas as andhras i.e. dravidian people, if we turn our attention to Mr. Law's indication that the word 'andhaka' in pali is used in the same sense as the word 'andhra'.25 Etymologically, the words andha and andhra are identical. Mr. Law indicates that Vincent-Smith also considers andhakas as dravidian people, who spoke in Telugu and that Shrinivas Iyengar, agreeing with this, assumes that they lived in the region of Vindhya mountains.24 Mr. Law elaborates that the word 'andhaka' was used also for the two peoples—mullaka and assaka, who lived, according to the data of the Buddhist literature, on the banks of the river Godavary, near the Vindhya mountains. It means that the name 'andhak' embraced a big group of closely related tribes of non-Aryan origin. They were connected with the whole area of Vindhya mountains. Krishna, who consequently came to be regarded as a God, belonged to one of these peoples.
In the Brahmanic literature and in the epic Mahabharat it is said that Krishna's uncle Kansa was indeed an incarnation of a demon and that is why the gods endowed Krishna with the strength to kill him. Such an interpretation can be easily understood as an attempt on the part of the Brahmins to Aryanise the image of godness of one who had been the object of wide reverence, in bhagvatism. The prince Krishna, was apparently only a semi-Aryan Kshatriya by origin and did not simply grow in the non-Aryan environment of rural settlements.
How was indeed this rural populace of those times? What were the rural settlements like, in the regions along the river Jamuna, and also the forest regions (the very name of the place where Krishna passed his childhood and youth-Vrindavan-means thick forest)? And if not with his own native people, then with whom Krishna's father could have most probably hidden him from attempts on his life from the side of Kansa, who was afraid of losing his throne? The danger of seizure of the throne by the son of Kansa's sister was com
25. V. Ch. Law, India as Described in Early Texts of Buddhism and Jainism, p. 108.
26. Ibid., p. 113.