The Killing of Kansa

At a Glance

• Central figures: Krishna, the eighth son of Devaki and the fulfillment of a divine prophecy; Kansa, the tyrannical king of Mathura and Krishna’s maternal uncle; Balarama, Krishna’s elder brother and companion.
• Setting: The city of Mathura and the village of Gokul, in the tradition of the Bhagavata Purana; the story unfolds across Krishna’s youth and culminates in the wrestling arena of Mathura.
• The turn: Kansa, having failed to kill Krishna through demons and assassins, lures him to Mathura under the pretense of a wrestling tournament, intending to have his champion wrestlers destroy the brothers in front of the assembled city.
• The outcome: Krishna kills both champion wrestlers Chanura and Mushtika, then leaps into the royal stands, drags Kansa from his throne, and kills him; Devaki and Vasudeva are freed from prison, and Ugrasena is restored to the throne.
• The legacy: The death of Kansa ended the imprisonment of Devaki and Vasudeva and restored the kingdom of Mathura to Ugrasena, the rightful king from whom Kansa had seized power.

A prophecy was spoken on the day of Devaki’s wedding. The voice that delivered it was not human - it came from the sky, while Kansa himself was driving his sister’s wedding chariot, feeling generous, pleased with the occasion. The voice said that her eighth child would kill him. Kansa stopped the chariot. He drew his sword on Devaki then and there. It was Vasudeva, her new husband, who talked him down - promising that he would hand over every child they had. Kansa let Devaki live, but he imprisoned them both, and he kept the promise enforced with his own hands. Six children born, six children killed. When the seventh came, it was spirited away by divine intervention before Kansa could reach it. When the eighth came, the prison doors opened on their own, the guards slept without knowing why, and Vasudeva carried the infant Krishna through the flooded Yamuna River to Gokul, where the cowherd Nanda and his wife Yashoda raised him as their own.

Kansa found out eventually that Krishna was alive. He sent demons. None of them came back.

Putana, Bakasura, and the Demons of Gokul

The first was Putana, a rakshasi who could take the form of a beautiful woman. She came to Gokul as a wet nurse, hoping to poison Krishna through her milk. Krishna nursed from her and drained the life out of her instead; she died in her true monstrous form in the middle of the village. The cowherds of Gokul chopped her body apart and burned it, and the smoke smelled strangely sweet - her death at Krishna’s hands, the texts say, had given her release.

After Putana came others: Trinavarta, who took him up in a whirlwind and was killed when Krishna became suddenly, impossibly heavy; Bakasura, a massive crane-bodied asura who swallowed Krishna whole and spat him out when the boy burned with heat inside him; Aghasura, who opened his mouth like a cave and swallowed an entire group of cowherd boys along with Krishna, and was killed from the inside when Krishna expanded himself until the asura burst. Each time Kansa heard a demon had died in Gokul, the news was the same. The boy from his sister’s womb was alive and growing stronger, and the prophecy was patient.

Akrura’s Invitation

By the time Krishna was a young man - quick-handed, dark-skinned, playing his flute in the forests of Vrindavan, beloved by every cowherd and every gopi in the village - Kansa had exhausted his stratagems at a distance. He needed Krishna in Mathura, where he could control the conditions of the encounter. He summoned his advisor Akrura and sent him to Gokul with an invitation: the king was holding a great wrestling tournament, and Krishna and his elder brother Balarama were cordially requested to attend.

Akrura made the journey with the unease of a man carrying a message he does not believe in. He was himself a devotee of Krishna; he knew what the invitation really was. But he went. When he arrived in Gokul and saw Krishna for the first time - the boy he had heard about all his life, standing there in the golden late-afternoon light with his flute - Akrura fell from his chariot and touched Krishna’s feet. Whatever was coming, Akrura wanted no confusion about which side he stood on.

Krishna and Balarama agreed to go. The gopis of Vrindavan wept. Krishna told them he would return. He climbed into Akrura’s chariot, and the road turned toward Mathura.

The Road Through the City

They entered Mathura the next morning. The people of the city came out to watch - men and women who had spent years under Kansa’s rule, taxed and threatened and silenced, and who had been told that two young men from Gokul were coming. They pressed forward to see Krishna and Balarama, and the brothers moved through the crowded streets unhurried, pausing, taking in the city.

At one point, a washerman who worked for the royal household was carrying fine garments intended for Kansa. Krishna asked him for a set. The man refused with contempt, mocking these village boys who had walked in as though they owned the streets of Mathura. Krishna struck him once, and the washerman fell dead. A few streets later, a humble florist named Sudama stopped them and offered garlands. He had nothing but flowers and the desire to give them. Krishna blessed him - long life, prosperity, devotion that would hold. The contrast was not lost on anyone watching. Mathura was paying attention.

When they reached the arena, a great bow was on display - a ceremonial weapon of Kansa’s, massive and strung with divine tension. Krishna picked it up, drew it fully, and broke it in two. The sound rang across the city. Kansa, in his palace, heard it and knew.

Chanura and Mushtika

The wrestling arena was packed - thousands of citizens seated in tiers, Kansa in his royal box above, the ring below where two figures stood waiting. Chanura and Mushtika, Kansa’s champion wrestlers, were not ordinary men. Both were known for having killed in the ring, not by accident but as a matter of practice, and Kansa had chosen them because of it. The plan was simple: arrange a fight between seasoned killers and two young men from a cowherd village, and let the outcome speak for itself.

The crowd was uneasy. Krishna and Balarama were not small, but they were young, and Chanura and Mushtika were built differently - the kind of men whose presence in a ring makes spectators go quiet. Some in the stands called out that this was no fair match. Kansa ignored them.

Balarama took Mushtika. The fight was brief and absolute. Balarama’s blows came heavy and certain, and when Mushtika fell, he did not get up.

Krishna faced Chanura. This one lasted longer - Chanura was quick, experienced, and tried every hold he knew. Krishna was quicker. He caught Chanura, lifted him clear off the ground, and brought him down with enough force that the wrestler died on impact. The ring went still for a moment. Then the arena erupted.

The Throne

Kansa rose from his seat. His wrestlers were dead. Whatever he had told himself about the probability of the prophecy, the calculation was over. He shouted to his guards to seize Krishna and Balarama, to arrest Vasudeva, to kill Ugrasena. He was still issuing orders when Krishna vaulted into the royal stands.

There was no speech. Krishna grabbed Kansa by the hair, pulled him from the elevated seat, and dragged him down into the arena. Kansa struggled. He had been the most feared man in Mathura for years, and fear had kept him strong, and none of it was enough. Krishna struck him once, decisively, and Kansa was dead.

The silence that followed lasted only a moment. The people of Mathura - who had watched six of Devaki’s children die, who had paid Kansa’s taxes and swallowed his edicts and endured - began to celebrate with the unreserved relief of people who had stopped believing relief was possible.

Devaki, Vasudeva, and Ugrasena

Krishna and Balarama went directly to the prison. Devaki and Vasudeva had spent most of their married life in chains, watching their children taken from them one by one. When Krishna entered and they saw his face - the face of the eighth child who had lived, grown, and come back - Devaki reached for him and held him without speaking for a long time.

Krishna freed them both. He then brought Ugrasena, his grandfather, back to the throne of Mathura - the king Kansa had overthrown when he seized power, restored now to the city that had suffered under his usurper son. Ugrasena’s reign began again without ceremony, simply the opening of the palace doors and the return of a man to a seat that had always been his.

The prophecy, which had arranged so much suffering and outlasted so many schemes, was complete.