Krishna in Mathura
At a Glance
- Central figures: Krishna, the eighth child of Devaki and avatar of Vishnu; Kansa, the tyrant king of Mathura; Balarama, Krishna’s elder brother; Akrura, Kansa’s advisor and secret devotee of Krishna.
- Setting: Mathura and Vrindavan, in the time described in the Bhagavata Purana; the story follows Krishna from his childhood in Vrindavan to his destined return to the city of his birth.
- The turn: Kansa invites Krishna and Balarama to Mathura under the pretext of a wrestling tournament, intending to have them killed - and Krishna accepts, knowing exactly what waits for him.
- The outcome: Krishna defeats Kansa’s champion wrestlers, leaps into the royal stands, and kills Kansa, fulfilling the prophecy; he frees his parents Devaki and Vasudeva and restores his grandfather Ugrasena to the throne.
- The legacy: The restoration of Ugrasena’s rule in Mathura and the liberation of Devaki and Vasudeva from Kansa’s prison - consequences that could not be undone and that made possible everything that came after in Krishna’s life.
Kansa had been killing his sister’s children since the first was born. The prophecy had been specific: Devaki’s eighth child would be the death of him. So he imprisoned Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, and each time a child came, Kansa came for it. Seven children died that way. The eighth - Krishna - survived only because Vasudeva carried him out of the prison in the night and into the care of a cowherd couple named Nanda and Yashoda, in the village of Gokul. Krishna grew up in Vrindavan, across the Yamuna from Mathura, performing deeds that made the whole region speak his name. Kansa sent asuras after him, one by one. None came back.
When Kansa finally understood that the eighth child had lived, he changed his approach. He would not send another demon. He would send an invitation.
Akrura’s Errand
The man Kansa chose was Akrura, his trusted advisor - a practical choice, since Akrura knew how to be diplomatic, how to make a trap look like an honor. What Kansa did not know was that Akrura had long been a devotee of Krishna, quietly certain that the boy in Vrindavan was no ordinary cowherd.
The invitation was for a wrestling tournament, a grand spectacle in the arena at Mathura. Krishna and Balarama were to come as guests. Kansa’s two champion wrestlers, Chanura and Mushtika, would be waiting. The crowd would see the young cowherds destroyed. That was the plan.
Akrura rode to Vrindavan and delivered the message. He did not need to warn Krishna about what lay in Mathura. Krishna already knew. The brothers agreed to go, not out of obedience to their uncle and not out of naivety, but because this was exactly where Krishna’s road was always going.
The people of Vrindavan did not want them to leave. They had loved Krishna since his childhood - the butter thief, the flute player, the one who had lifted Mount Govardhan on one finger and sheltered them all from Indra’s flood of rain. His departure left them hollow. Krishna told them he would not forget them. Then the cart rolled toward Mathura.
Vision at the Yamuna
They stopped at the Yamuna River to bathe. Akrura waded in and, beneath the surface, saw what he had always believed but never witnessed: Krishna in his true form, four-armed, holding the conch and the chakra, the mace and the lotus, vast and luminous, with Balarama beside him. The vision lasted long enough for Akrura to understand, fully and without reservation, what he was escorting to Mathura. He came up out of the water and looked at the two young men standing on the bank, and said nothing about what he had seen. He did not need to.
They continued toward the city.
The Streets of Mathura
Mathura was alive with preparations for the tournament. Banners, crowds, the smell of festival food. Krishna and Balarama walked through the streets dressed as cowherds - simple clothes, nothing ornate - and people stopped to look at them anyway. There was something about Krishna’s face, his bearing, the way he moved, that made the citizens turn. Mathura had been under Kansa’s rule long enough that joy had grown unfamiliar. These two young men arriving in the city felt, to the people watching from the roadsides, like a change in the weather.
Not everyone was welcoming. A washerman who worked for Kansa blocked their way and refused them clothes, sneering at them as peasants who had no business walking in a king’s city. Krishna touched him. The man dropped dead. Krishna and Balarama took the finest garments the man had been carrying and wore them into the city.
A little further along, a florist named Sudama saw them coming and ran out with garlands - the best flowers he had, the ones meant for Kansa’s tournament. He placed them around the brothers’ necks with his whole heart in the gesture. Krishna blessed him. Sudama would prosper. The contrast between the two encounters was not lost on the people watching.
Chanura and Mushtika
The arena on the day of the tournament was packed. Kansa sat in his elevated seat with his guards and his ministers, watching the gates through which the challengers would come. Chanura and Mushtika stood in the ring - enormous men, both of them, renowned across the kingdom as undefeatable. Against them, two cowherds.
The crowd went quiet when the match started. The mismatch looked cruel. These were boys against men whose arms were as thick as tree trunks.
Balarama took Mushtika. It was not a long fight. Mushtika hit the ground and did not rise.
Krishna and Chanura circled each other. Chanura was faster than he looked and more experienced than any wrestler Krishna had faced in Vrindavan. They clashed hard, again and again, and for a while neither gave ground. Then Krishna found his opening. He seized Chanura, lifted him, and drove him into the earth. Chanura died.
The arena erupted. Mathura had watched its oppressor’s best champions fall to a pair of barefoot cowherds, and it roared with everything that had been suppressed for years.
The Death of Kansa
Kansa rose from his seat. The plan was finished, and he knew it, and he tried to do what he always did when cornered - use force, use authority, order his guards to take the brothers. He was shouting commands when Krishna moved.
Krishna leaped into the stands. He crossed the distance to Kansa in moments, grabbed him by his hair, and dragged him down into the arena. Kansa struck at him; it did no good. Krishna killed him with a single blow and left his body on the arena floor.
The reign that had begun with Kansa locking his sister in a cell and waiting for her to give birth to a child he could kill - that reign was over.
The people of Mathura made no effort to hide their relief.
Devaki, Vasudeva, and the Throne of Ugrasena
Krishna went directly to the prison. Devaki and Vasudeva had spent years in a cell beneath Kansa’s palace, watching their children taken from them. They did not yet fully understand what their son had become - the Vrindavan stories had reached them in fragments - but they knew the boy standing at the prison door. Krishna freed them and brought them out with Balarama at his side.
Ugrasena, Kansa’s father, the rightful king whom Kansa had deposed to take the throne, was restored to rule. It was a deliberate act. Krishna was not claiming Mathura for himself. He had come to end a wrong, not to take a crown. Ugrasena was old and had been powerless for years, but he was legitimate, and that mattered. The throne was returned to him. The city came under just rule again.
Krishna remained in Mathura. His childhood in Vrindavan was over. The years ahead would take him toward Kurukshetra, toward the Pandavas, toward the battlefield where Arjuna would lower his bow and Krishna would speak the words that became the Bhagavad Gita. But that was still ahead. For now, Devaki held her son for the first time since the night Vasudeva had carried him away through the rain, and Mathura lit its lamps, and the Yamuna ran on in the dark outside the city walls.