Kṣṇa as a Vāsudeva Śalākāpuruṣa

According to the medieval Jaina tradition, the region of the universe roughly synonymous with India (i.e. Bharata-varṣa or -kṣetra on Jambūdvīpa)Footnote ³ is witness, in each and every epoch (i.e. in each utsarpiṇī and avasarpiṇī),Footnote ⁴ to a series of sixty-three (triṣaṣṭi) great (mahā-) or illustrious (śalākā-) persons (puruṣas),Footnote ⁵ each of whom falls into one of five paradigmatic categories: there are always twenty-four tīrthaṅkaras or universal saviours, twelve cakravartins or universal sovereigns, and nine baladevas, nine vāsudevas, and nine prativāsudevas.Footnote ⁶ Biographies of these śalākāpuruṣas, which taken together form the basis for the Jaina Universal History, are found in medieval Jaina purāṇas and carit(r)as, as well as scattered throughout the canonical texts and their commentarial literature.Footnote ⁷ Hemacandra's TŚPC, however, gives complete and highly standardized biographies of all sixty-three śalākāpuruṣas. While some of the biographies are exceedingly brief, Hemacandra has been careful to include certain standard features for each. Some of the biographies, in fact, consist of little more than an enumeration of vital statistics and a brief rendition of the necessary and paradigmatic events required to constitute the status of an illustrious person.Footnote ⁸

Kṣṇa is said to be the ninth and final vāsudeva of the current avasarpiṇī, and like all vāsudevas, many of the important events in his biography conform to the general paradigmatic characteristics of a vāsudeva in general. In contrast to Hindu tradition, none of these vāsudevas is considered a divine incarnation of Viṣṇu or any other god:Footnote ⁹ Jaina doctrine lacks the ontological distinction between the human and divine necessary to make such a phenomenon meaningful.Footnote ¹⁰ The Jaina vāsudevas are linked, however, by certain common traits, many of which have been borrowed directly from Kṣṇa as depicted in the Hindu tradition (e.g. they are always dark-complexioned and wear bright yellow robes). Their birth is heralded by seven auspicious dreams, and each vāsudeva is referred to by a host of familiar vaiṣṇava epithets often associated with the Hindu Viṣṇu-Kṣṇa.Footnote ¹¹ In both the Hindu and Jaina traditions, Kṣṇa's father is named Vasudeva, making the name Vāsudeva appear to be a patronymic.Footnote ¹² The Jaina use of the term vāsudeva, however, as a generic title of a recurring class of beings of which Kṣṇa is merely one in an infinite series, also has its parallel in the Hindu tradition. In the Hindu purāṇas, for example, the majority of Viṣṇu's incarnations are referred to, at one time or another, by the epithet “Vāsudeva”, as is celestial Viṣṇu himself. Thus, in both traditions, the term vāsudeva must be considered a broad epithet or title (rather than a patronymic) that may be applied appropriately to various beings or manifestations of a single being.

Each vāsudeva comes equipped with a similarly paradigmatic half-brother (same father, different mother),Footnote ¹³ known as a baladeva,Footnote ¹⁴ and an equally paradigmatic nemesis, the prativāsudeva, who conducts a cruel reign as an ardhacakrin (lit. “half-cakravartin”). In the case of Kṣṇa, his baladeva-half-brother is none other than Baladeva/Balarāma, and his prativāsudeva-rival is Jarāsandha. By way of comparison, the eighth baladeva-vāsudeva-prativāsudeva triad of the current avasarpiṇī was, according to Jainas, comprised of the Rāmāyaṇa's Rāma, Lakṣmaṇa, and Rāvaṇa.Footnote ¹⁵ Prior to their battle with one another, the prativāsudeva is the reigning ardhacakrin in the southern half of Bharatavarṣa; following the battle, the victorious vāsudeva assumes the position of ardhacakrin.

In Hemacandra's TŚPC, the manner in which a vāsudeva kills a prativāsudeva is the same: after the requisite verbal jousting, the prativāsudeva hurls a cakra (discus)Footnote ¹⁶ that should never fail to kill the one at which it is aimed; nevertheless, it strikes the vāsudeva on the chest with the flat side, rather than with the sharp, cutting edge and merely knocks him temporarily unconscious. Regaining his wits, the vāsudeva grasps the cakra, hurls it back at the prativāsudeva, and decapitates him.Footnote ¹⁷ This same formulaic event has occurred an infinite number of times in the past, and will be repeated ever after into an infinite future. In the particular instance of Kṣṇa's slaying of Jarāsandha, the decapitation takes place during a great battle in which the Pāṇḍavas are allies of Kṣṇa and the Kauravas allies of Jarāsandha. In fact, not only is the great Bhārata warFootnote ¹⁸ of the Mahābhārata quietly subsumed here into the more cosmically-significant struggle between vāsudeva and prativāsudeva, but the Pāṇḍavas, unlike the heroes of the Rāmāyaṇa, are not even granted the status of śalākāpuruṣas. The most that can be said of the Pāṇḍavas, in this context, is that they were good Jaina laymen, and sometimes not even that. It was not until the thirteenth century that Jainas began composing works devoted primarily to the Pāṇḍavas, and even then their status was far below that of Kṣṇa.Footnote ¹⁹

The story of Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha in the TŚPC

Despite the formulaic nature of their battle, the details of how and why each vāsudeva and prativāsudeva come to blows are particular to each instance.Footnote ²⁰ In the case of Lakṣmaṇa and Rāvaṇa, it was the kidnapping of Sītā. In the case of Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha, there is a rather lengthy and complex relationship that ranges across much of TŚPC 8, i.e. the Nemināthacarita. When it finally occurs, the slaying of Jarāsandha by Kṣṇa should come as no surprise: it is repeatedly foretold by astrologers, sages and ill omens. Some of the more salient points in this relationship, particularly those that emphasize the cosmically-fated nature of Kṣṇa's victory over Jarāsandha, will now be summarized, as they provide an interesting contrast to the versions found in the Mahābhārata and Hindu purāṇas.

Long before Kṣṇa's birth, the prativāsudeva Jarāsandha had risen to become the king of Magadha as well as an ardhacakrin.Footnote ²¹ Kṣṇa's uncle Samudravijaya, king of the Yādavas and Jarāsandha's vassal, lived in Śauryapura (near Mathurā) together with his nine younger brothers, collectively known as the daśārhas, of which Kṣṇa's father Vasudeva was the youngest.Footnote ²² Several early indications that fate weighed against Jarāsandha came in the form of astrologers' predictions. First, Vasudeva was warned off from marrying Jarāsandha's daughter Jīvayaśas due to an astrologer's prediction that she would be the ruin of both her husband's and her father's family.Footnote ²³ In his stead, the ill-fated Kaṁsa, king of Mathurā, was wed to Jīvayaśas.Footnote ²⁴ Next, Vasudeva went to Jarāsandha's city, Rājagha, won a fortune in gold by playing dice all night, and at dawn gave it all away to beggars.Footnote ²⁵ As it happened, an astrologer had previously predicted that the son of a man who did just that would be Jarāsandha's slayer.Footnote ²⁶ Soon thereafter, Vasudeva met and cured a particular ailment of Nandiṣeṇā, another daughter of Jarāsandha.Footnote ²⁷ As before, an astrologer had predicted that Jarāsandha would be slain by the son of the man who cured Nandiṣeṇā.Footnote ²⁸ On both occasions, Jarāsandha attempted to kill Vasudeva, but to no avail.Footnote ²⁹

In time, Vasudeva married Rohiṇī and she bore him a son named Baladeva, the ninth baladeva.Footnote ³⁰ Vasudeva then went to Mathurā where he married Kaṁsa's cousin Devakī.Footnote ³¹ Kaṁsa held a festival in their honour, but during the festival, Kaṁsa's younger brother Atimukta, a Jaina monk, arrived and was subjected to the unbidden flirtations of Kaṁsa's wine-intoxicated wife Jīvayaśas. Atimukta then declared to herFootnote ³² that the seventh child (i.e. Kṣṇa) of the couple in whose honour the festival was prepared (i.e. Vasudeva and Devakī) would be the destroyer of the families of both her husband (Kaṁsa) and her father (Jarāsandha).Footnote ³³ As in the Hindu accounts, Kaṁsa strove to evade this eventuality by killing each of Devakī's children as soon as they were born, but fate was inexorably against him. Having had seven dreams heralding the birth of a vāsudeva,Footnote ³⁴ Devakī gave birth to Kṣṇa.Footnote ³⁵ For safety, Kṣṇa was taken to Nanda's cattle station Gokula, where Nanda's wife had just given birth to a girl. Vasudeva traded children and put Nanda's daughter next to Devakī in place of Kṣṇa. When this child was taken to Kaṁsa, he saw it was a girl and thus believed that the sage's prediction must have been wrong.Footnote ³⁶

While residing as an infant in Gokula, Kṣṇa gained a reputation for amazing feats that were actually brought about by his guardian deities.Footnote ³⁷ Meanwhile, Kaṁsa, still agitated about the prediction of his death, asked his astrologer if Atimukta's prediction was false; the astrologer said it was not, and that Devakī's true seventh child must be somewhere else. After fulfilling various predictions of the astrologers, Kṣṇa killed Kaṁsa.Footnote ³⁸ Kaṁsa's father carried out the funeral rites, something Kaṁsa's wife Jīvayaśas refused to do until she had first seen the death of Baladeva, Kṣṇa, and the daśārhas.Footnote ³⁹ In the meantime, Jīvayaśas returned to her father Jarāsandha in Rājagha and relayed to him the prediction made by Atimukta, and about Kaṁsa's death at the hands of Kṣṇa. Jarāsandha sent a messenger to Samudravijaya demanding that both Kṣṇa and Baladeva be surrendered; Samudravijaya refused. After Jarāsandha's messenger had departed, the Yādavas consulted the astrologer Kroṣṭuki: while predicting the eventual victory of Baladeva and Kṣṇa, the astrologer suggested that the Yādavas travel west to the shore of the ocean and establish a city (Dvārakā) there.Footnote ⁴⁰

At this time, Jarāsandha sent his son Kāla with 500 kings to destroy the Yādavas, but the guardian deities of Baladeva and Kṣṇa tricked him into committing suicide.Footnote ⁴¹ Jarāsandha was distraught at the loss of his son, but he now, presumably, believed Kṣṇa dead. As the Yādavas were fleeing westwards, the Jaina sage Atimukta appeared once again. The sage informed them that Samudravijaya's own son Ariṣṭanemi would be the twenty-second tīrthaṅkara (tīrthak t), while Baladeva and Kṣṇa would be a baladeva (bala) and a vāsudeva (viṣṇu), respectively, destined to be, from the city of Dvārakā, lords of half of Bharata through the slaying of Jarāsandha.Footnote ⁴²

Similar to Hindu accounts, Kṣṇa snatched away and married Rukmiṇī, despite the fact that she had been promised already to Śiśupāla, king of the Cedis. Rukmiṇī accepted Kṣṇa due to the Jaina sage Atimukta's prediction that she was destined to be Kṣṇa's wife. Believing her to have been abducted, her brother and Śiśupāla, together with large armies, pursued them. Baladeva crushed them, and sent Śiśupāla and others fleeing.Footnote ⁴³ This brief episode is the only interaction Kṣṇa had with Śiśupāla prior to the final battle. Sometime thereafter, some travelling merchants from YavanadvīpaFootnote ⁴⁴ innocently informed Jīvayaśas that Kṣṇa was yet alive and king of Dvārakā. Outraged, she informed Jarāsandha, who ordered his armies to march towards Dvārakā for the extinction of the Yādavas.Footnote ⁴⁵ Many kings joined Jarāsandha in this march (during which several evil omens occurred), including Hiraṇyanābha, Śiśupāla, and the Kauravas led by Duryodhana. Spies informed Kṣṇa that Jarāsandha was on his way, and Kṣṇa marshalled the Yādavas for battle.

On a day picked by the astrologer Kroṣṭuki, Kṣṇa, bearing a Garuḍa banner and surrounded by the Yādavas, set out to meet Jarāsandha's army.Footnote ⁴⁶ Before the battle began, Jarāsandha's minister Haṁsaka tried to counsel Jarāsandha against fighting, and it is here we have our first mention of the fact that the Pāṇḍavas are taking part in the battle, allied with Kṣṇa. Another minister, however, named Ḍimbhaka, convinced Jarāsandha that the war must go forward, and King Hiraṇyanābha was made the general of his army. Battle ensued, and Hemacandra gives us vignettes of individual conflicts, including one between Arjuna and Duryodhana, Sahadeva and Śakuni, Bhīma and Duḥśāsana, Nakula and Ulūka, and Yudhiṣṭhira and Śalya.Footnote ⁴⁷ In the end, Yudhiṣṭhira killed Śalya, Bhīma killed Duḥśāsana and Duryodhana, and Arjuna killed Jayadratha and Karṇa. When Hiraṇyanābha was killed in battle, Jarāsandha installed Śiśupāla as his general. After a little verbal sparring, Kṣṇa killed Śiśupāla by cutting his head off with a sword.Footnote ⁴⁸ Jarāsandha then attacked Kṣṇa, and a rumour spread that Kṣṇa had been killed by him. At this, Neminātha, the impending twenty-second tīrthaṅkara, entered the battle, and “without anger” (vinā kopaṁ)Footnote ⁴⁹ killed a host of enemy kings. Nemi did not, however, kill Jarāsandha himself, realizing that only a vāsudeva kills a prativāsudeva.Footnote ⁵⁰

At this point, Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha stood face to face in battle, and Jarāsandha barraged Kṣṇa with various weapons to no effect. In desperation, he hurled his cakra. Though the cakra hit Kṣṇa on his chest, it landed with the hub and he was unhurt; the cakra then hovered at his side while he took it in his hand. Then, the gods proclaimed that the ninth vāsudeva had arisen, and they rained a shower of flowers upon Kṣṇa.Footnote ⁵¹ Kṣṇa, displaying compassion, offered to let Jarāsandha return home wealthy and unharmed if only he would become Kṣṇa's vassal. Jarāsandha simply ordered Kṣṇa to hurl the cakra; in an instant, Jarāsandha's head was cut off and fell to the ground, while Jarāsandha's soul sank to the fourth hell. Once again the gods rained flowers from the trees of heaven on Kṣṇa.Footnote ⁵² This act brought the battle to a conclusion, and while Kṣṇa goes on to become the new ardhacakrin, he does allow Jarāsandha's son Sahadeva to be a vassal king in Magadha.

While the Pāṇḍavas participate in the war against Jarāsandha, they are relatively minor characters; in this sense, the Jaina account reads like a version of events sung by bards at the court in Mathurā or Dvārakā, glorifying Kṣṇa and relegating the Pāṇḍavas to a secondary role. The Hindu Mahābhārata, on the other hand, reads very much like a story designed for the court in Hastināpura, focusing primarily upon the Pāṇḍavas and relegating Kṣṇa to the role of periodic, albeit divine, ally and aide. In other words, I think there is here evidence of a struggle between the ascendancy of Kṣṇa on the one hand, and the Pāṇḍavas on the other, and the Jainas unequivocally adopt the ascendancy of Kṣṇa;Footnote ⁵³ furthermore, in doing so, they may actually preserve an ancient tradition that, in Hinduism, lost out under the pressure of the increasing popularity of the Mahābhārata and its heroes the Pāṇḍavas. In the introduction to his edition of the Harivaṁśapurāṇa, Alsdorf suggested that the Jaina tradition may, in rare cases, have “preserved an old original trait which is obliterated from the [Hindu] epic-Purāṇic tradition as available to us”.Footnote ⁵⁴ The slaying of Jarāsandha by Kṣṇa, as the Jainas claim, rather than by Bhīma, as the Hindus would have it, may illustrate an example of this rare trend. Dahlmann, in his Genesis des Mahābhārata, suggested this very thing.Footnote ⁵⁵

Jarāsandha in the Mahābhārata

This now brings us to the account of the slaying of Jarāsandha found in the Mahābhārata. Here it was not Kṣṇa but rather Bhīma, one of the five heroic Pāṇḍavas, who killed Jarāsandha. The story may be briefly summarized, but we might note two points at the outset. First, contrary to the Jaina account, this confrontation with Jarāsandha happened long before the Bhārata war began, and is largely unconnected with it.Footnote ⁵⁶ Second, much of the enmity and warfare in the Mahābhārata is explained theologically by the fact that countless demons had incarnated on earth and were a burden the earth herself could not bear.Footnote ⁵⁷ In response to her plea, the gods likewise agreed to take human birth in order to rid the earth of her demonic burden. Interestingly, in this theological context, Jarāsandha is not only the first demon (Vipracitti) whose incarnation is mentioned, but he is also the first incarnation mentioned period; moreover, Śiśupāla (Hiraṇyakaśipu) is listed second.Footnote ⁵⁸

While the Pāṇḍavas were dwelling in their palace in Indraprastha, the sage Nārada arrived,Footnote ⁵⁹ and in his conversation with Yudhiṣṭhira he mentioned that Pāṇḍu, the long-deceased father of Yudhiṣṭhira now residing in heaven, desired Yudhiṣṭhira to perform the rājasūya sacrifice.Footnote ⁶⁰ Oddly unconfident about this undertaking, Yudhiṣṭhira insisted on consulting Kṣṇa, whose advice, he thought, would be most unbiased. Kṣṇa suggested that the rājasūya should indeed be done, but only after disposing of Jarāsandha,Footnote ⁶¹ who at that time was considered a universal sovereign. Curiously, there is no indication that Yudhiṣṭhira even knew of the existence of Jarāsandha at this point,Footnote ⁶² but in any case, there was no personal enmity between them.

Let us take a closer look at Kṣṇa's involvement in all of this. In Mahābhārata 2.13, Kṣṇa tells Yudhiṣṭhira the following: (i) Jarāsandha, king of Magadha, attained universal sovereignty from birth,Footnote ⁶³ and had a massive force at his disposal; (ii) the mighty Śiśupāla had become his general;Footnote ⁶⁴ (iii) one of Jarāsandha's allies among the Cedis had now (falsely and out of folly) claimed for himself Kṣṇa's position as the Supreme Person (puruṣottama), and was widely known by the title Pauṇḍraka Vāsudeva;Footnote ⁶⁵ (iv) Kṣṇa had killed the wicked king Kaṁsa, husband of Jarāsandha's daughters Asti and Prāpti, and now these widowed daughters were inciting Jarāsandha to kill Kṣṇa in revenge; (v) out of fear of Jarāsandha, Kṣṇa had moved all the people of Mathurā westward to the city of Dvārakā;Footnote ⁶⁶ and (vi) the wicked Jarāsandha had taken many righteous kings captive and meant to sacrifice them to Śiva. Having provided Yudhiṣṭhira with these details, Kṣṇa, ironically giving the least “unbiased” advice of anyone, said to Yudhiṣṭhira:

In an effort to avoid the consequences of a large-scale, violent attack, Yudhiṣṭhira agreed to approach Jarāsandha by stealth rather than force.Footnote ⁶⁸ Kṣṇa, Arjuna, and Bhīma went to Jarāsandha disguised as Brahmins. The confrontation with Jarāsandha, concluding in his death, is found in Mahābhārata 2.19–22. As both sides prepared for combat, we are told that Jarāsandha called to mind his two invincible ministers Haṁsa and Ḍibhaka, both of whom were tricked into committing suicide while Jarāsandha's army laid siege to the Yādavas,Footnote ⁶⁹ and for whose deaths Jarāsandha surely blamed Kṣṇa. Kṣṇa, on the other hand, remembered that Jarāsandha possessed immense strength, but more importantly, that “the slaying [of Jarāsandha] was the appointed lot of another.Footnote ⁷⁰ Kṣṇa, the younger brother of Baladeva and chief of the self-possessed, respecting the command of Brahmā, did not desire to kill [Jarāsandha] himself”.Footnote ⁷¹

In Mahābhārata 2.21, Kṣṇa asked Jarāsandha which of the three he wished to fight, and Jarāsandha chose Bhīma, saying that it was better to be defeated by a better man (no doubt a slight directed at Kṣṇa). In making this choice freely, Jarāsandha is depicted here as the master of his own fate, however fated his decision may have been. But one thing is clear: the animosity at the core of this impending clash was between Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha. After a protracted battle lasting a fortnight, Bhīma finally killed Jarāsandha. But even here, Kṣṇa played a role. When Jarāsandha broke off from battle due to fatigue one night, Kṣṇa, through his usual double-talk, counselled Bhīma to take advantage of Jarāsandha's fatigue. Bhīma understood Kṣṇa's intent; he prepared to strike, declaring to Kṣṇa that Jarāsandha did not deserve mercy. Then, “thus addressed, Kṣṇa, tiger among men, with a desire for the death of Jarāsandha then replied to Bhīma, inciting him: ‘Quickly, O Bhīma, demonstrate for us now, upon Jarāsandha, that supreme divine nature and power you received from Vāyu!’”Footnote ⁷² Bhīma killed Jarāsandha with his bare hands, holding him up in the air and then slamming him down on his knee, breaking his back.Footnote ⁷³

Upon the death of Jarāsandha, Kṣṇa released the imprisoned kings, who showed their gratitude to Kṣṇa and bestowed riches upon him. Before long, the kings once again heaped praise on Kṣṇa for accomplishing their rescue: “It is no wonder, O strong-armed son of Devakī, that the protection of dharma rests in you, furnished with the might of Bhīma and Arjuna”.Footnote ⁷⁴ These kings then supported Yudhiṣṭhira's rājasūya, as did Jarāsandha's son Sahadeva, the new king of Magadha anointed as such by Kṣṇa. As a summary of the event, the text reads: “Thus did [Kṣṇa], a tiger among men and exceedingly wise, cause the enemy Jarāsandha to be killed by the Pāṇḍavas”.Footnote ⁷⁵ Bhīma, it would seem, gets little credit for his mighty deed; it is Kṣṇa, and none of the Pāṇḍavas, who is described as “one whose enemy was defeated”.Footnote ⁷⁶

Śiśupāla in the Mahābhārata

With the disposal of Jarāsandha accomplished, the Pāṇḍavas began their conquest of the world (digvijaya), by which Yudhiṣṭhira attained universal sovereignty.Footnote ⁷⁷ Bhīma, who set out to conquer the eastern quarter, approached Śiśupāla, king of the Cedis. One might suppose that Bhīma's prior killing of Jarāsandha might have made him Śiśupāla's bitter rival, but we find nothing of the sort:

It seems clear from this exchange that either Śiśupāla did not know that Bhīma had killed Jarāsandha, or that he blamed Kṣṇa for arranging it and held Bhīma in no way responsible. He even calls Bhīma anagha, “faultless”. A third possibility, of course, is that Śiśupāla did not know that Bhīma killed Jarāsandha because, in a more ancient version of the story, Bhīma had not in fact killed him: Kṣṇa had killed Jarāsandha himself, without the need for Bhīma as a weapon.

In Mahābhārata 2.33–42, we find the story of Kṣṇa's slaying of Śiśupāla, after the latter strenuously objected to Kṣṇa being honoured above all else at the conclusion of Yudhiṣṭhira's rājasūya sacrifice. Śiśupāla had two obvious reasons for personal enmity toward Kṣṇa; first, Kṣṇa's wife Rukmiṇī was first promised to Śiśupāla, but was stolen away by Kṣṇa (as in the Jaina account above); and second, Kṣṇa instigated the slaying of Śiśupāla's friend and ally Jarāsandha. Though these things were mentioned by Śiśupāla during his tirade against Kṣṇa, they were not the main objection he raised: he simply stated that, according to Law, Kṣṇa could not possibly be considered the most worthy of honour at a gathering of such glorious kings and sages. He repeatedly criticized Kṣṇa's lowly status and lack of respect for the Law, and stated explicitly what Jarāsandha had implied: “That mighty king Jarāsandha, who did not wish to fight with this man [K ṣṇa] in battle, considering him a mere servant, was highly regarded by me”.Footnote ⁷⁹ After exchanging heated words, Śiśupāla openly challenged Kṣṇa to battle and, as if in the blink of an eye, Kṣṇa released his cakra, decapitating Śiśupāla while the latter was still spouting off:

This “miraculous” absorption of Śiśupāla will be addressed below.

Pauṇḍraka in the Mahābhārata

In the Mahābhārata, the identity of Pauṇḍraka Vāsudeva is rather vague.Footnote ⁸¹ When Kṣṇa described Jarāsandha and his allies to Yudhiṣṭhira in Mahābhārata 2.13, he made the following statement (having already mentioned that Śiśupāla was Jarāsandha's generalFootnote ⁸²):

What we know of this Pauṇḍraka from the Mahābhārata is rather meagre. He is said to have attended Draupadī's svayaṁvara.Footnote ⁸⁴ In Mahābhārata 2.27.16, we are told that Bhīma, having subdued Śiśupāla and continuing his digvijaya march eastward, subdued Jarāsandha's son (in Magadha), and then continued eastward, where we are told he vanquished “the lord of the Puṇḍras, a mighty hero Vāsudeva”.Footnote ⁸⁵ The last we hear of this Vāsudeva of Puṇḍra is at Yudhiṣṭhira's rājasūya,Footnote ⁸⁶ where he plays no part.

Jarāsandha in the Hindu purāṇas

In the Mahābhārata, the story of Jarāsandha is relatively succinct, if somewhat sketchy and confusing. He is said to have been the incarnation of the demon Vipracitti, though this fact does not seem to have any greater significance than locating him among the horde of demons burdening the earth. In the Hindu purāṇas, the account of Jarāsandha's hostility towards Kṣṇa is greatly expanded, though his connection to Vipracitti is again glossed over and adds little to our understanding of the character.Footnote ⁸⁷ The purāṇic versions of Jarāsandha's story may be divided into two parts: (i) his repeated battles with Kṣṇa, and (ii) his death.

As a representative example of the first part, Viṣṇu Purāṇa 5.22 ff. provides the story of the almost unremitting battles between Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha, barely alluded to in the Mahābhārata. Hearing that his son-in-law Kaṁsa had been killed by Kṣṇa, Jarāsandha assembled an enormous army and attacked Kṣṇa at Mathurā. Kṣṇa and Balarāma, together with a small Yādava force, quickly routed Jarāsandha's army and put him to flight. All told, Jarāsandha and his armies are said to have attacked Mathurā eighteen times,Footnote ⁸⁸ and were defeated each time, though Jarāsandha was always left alive. In conjunction with these battles, Viṣṇu Purāṇa 5.23 gives the story of a mighty warrior named Kālayavana.Footnote ⁸⁹ Having been informed by Nārada that the Yādavas were the mightiest heroes on earth, the audacious Kālayavana decided to attack them at Mathurā. When Kṣṇa learned of this, he was concerned that Kālayavana's force would weaken the Yādavas enough that Jarāsandha might finally defeat them. So Kṣṇa arranged for a place in the ocean (Dvārakā) and took all the citizens of Mathurā there. In other words, it was no longer merely the threat of Jarāsandha, but rather the combined threat of Jarāsandha and Kālayavana, that provoked the escape to Dvārakā. When Kālayavana arrived at Mathurā, Kṣṇa ran away, leading him to a cave where the sage Mucukunda slept; Kālayavana, awakening the sage, was reduced to ashes by him.Footnote ⁹⁰ In the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, the issue of Jarāsandha is not raised again, nor is the story of his death found in this text.Footnote ⁹¹ This basic story is also told, with some variation, in Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.50–52, Brahma Purāṇa 87–8, Padma Purāṇa 6.246, and very briefly in Agni Purāṇa 12.27–34.Footnote ⁹²

The most complete, well-crafted and interesting version of Jarāsandha's story is found in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Here, during his repeated attacks on Mathurā, we get a novel rationale for why Kṣṇa does not just kill Jarāsandha once and for all. In Bhāgavata 10.50, we are told that Kṣṇa remembered that the purpose of his own incarnation was to remove the burden of the earth; thus, he decided that Jarāsandha should not be killed so that the latter would have the opportunity to amass another army and attack again.Footnote ⁹³ With the destruction of Jarāsandha's armies, over and over again, the earth's burden would be continually lightened. In terms of a death toll, this repeated carnage outweighed the Bhārata war many times over.Footnote ⁹⁴ The story of Kālayavana is given in Bhāgavata 10.51, though here he is only identified as a yavana warrior. On the heels of this episode, and as Kṣṇa predicted, Jarāsandha then attacked Mathurā for the eighteenth time. Pretending to be afraid, Kṣṇa and Balarāma ran away. The two appeared to take refuge on a mountain, and not finding them, Jarāsandha had the entire mountain burned. Thinking them dead, Jarāsandha returned to Magadha.

Unlike the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, the Bhāgavata includes the episode of Jarāsandha's death and puts events narrated in the Mahābhārata into a larger and more logical context. One of the charges that Kṣṇa made against Jarāsandha in the Mahābhārata was that he held righteous kings hostage, meaning to sacrifice them to Śiva.Footnote ⁹⁵ According to Bhāgavata 10.70, Kṣṇa, while at Dvārakā, actually received a message from these imprisoned kings, asking to be freed from the clutches of Jarāsandha. Just then, Nārada arrived and Kṣṇa, in a seeming non sequitur, asked him about the intentions of the Pāṇḍavas. Nārada replied that Yudhiṣthira had a desire to perform the rājasūya sacrifice in order to honour Kṣṇa, and hoped to receive Kṣṇa's blessing. Kṣṇa then asked his servant Uddhava for advice. In 10.71, Uddhava gives a speech in which much that may have been implied in the Mahābhārata is made explicit. By supporting Yudhiṣṭhira's thirst for supremacy, which would involve subduing all rival kings, Kṣṇa could kill two birds with one stone: he could both loyally support his cousin Yudhiṣṭhira and accomplish the release of the kings imprisoned by Jarāsandha. Uddhava also explains why it is that Bhīma should be the one to kill Jarāsandha:

Kṣṇa proceeded to Indraprastha, but unlike the version in the Mahābhārata, he did not tell Yudhiṣṭhira that the defeat of Jarāsandha must be done in prelude to the digvijaya. Rather, the digvijaya began at once, and it is only when Jarāsandha remained defiant that Kṣṇa related Uddhava's strategy to Yudhiṣṭhira. As in the Mahābhārata, Kṣṇa, Bhīma and Arjuna went to Magadha and Bhīma killed Jarāsandha. The version in the Bhāgavata, however, has some interesting additions. When Jarāsandha divined that the three “Brahmins” must be kṣatriyas in disguise, he did not waver in his duty to offer them service. He thought to himself:

In other words, Jarāsandha likened this situation to that of another struggle between an avatāra of Viṣṇu (Vāmana) and a demon (Bali). By likening himself to Bali, Jarāsandha seems to view himself as a likely target for an avatāra of Viṣṇu. But given the choice of who to fight, Jarāsandha again chose Bhīma, stating that Kṣṇa was a coward who abandoned his own city (Mathurā) for the safety of the ocean (Dvārakā). The fight between Bhīma and Jarāsandha lasted two fortnights, and Bhīma became discouraged. But then, Kṣṇa “re-invigorated Bhīma (Pārtha) with his own energy”,Footnote ⁹⁸ and Bhīma killed Jarāsandha with his bare hands.Footnote ⁹⁹ Once again, Kṣṇa does not kill Jarāsandha personally, but by invigorating Bhīma with his tejas, we might consider Kṣṇa as the efficient force. Kṣṇa freed the imprisoned kings, who once again showed all gratitude to him. As a summary of the events, the text states: “Having used Bhīmasena to kill Jarāsandha, Kṣṇa (Keśava) was honoured by [Jarāsandha's son] Sahadeva, and then departed, together with the two Pāṇḍavas”.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

The account of Jarāsandha in the Padma Purāṇa is similar to the basic story told in the Bhāgavata, though it too has a few interesting features. For example, Kālayavana is not sent to fight the Yādavas by Nārada, but rather is engaged as an ally by Jarāsandha himself.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Also, here Kṣṇa explained to Bhīma and Arjuna that Jarāsandha had to be killed by hand owing to a boon from Śiva that made him invincible to all weapons.Footnote ¹⁰² As in the other versions, the Padma Purāṇa also states that Kṣṇa killed Jarāsandha using Bhīma.Footnote ¹⁰³ Thus, in every purāṇic version examined, it is clear that the real fight was between Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha, and for reasons sometimes explained and sometimes not, Bhīma was employed merely as Kṣṇa's weapon.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Interestingly, the Mahābhārata's vague suggestion that Kṣṇa refrained from killing Jarāsandha himself due to his “respecting the command of Brahmā” is never followed up in the purāṇas.

Śiśupāla in the Hindu purāṇas

The Mahābhārata informs us that Śiśupāla, son of Kṣṇa's aunt Yādavī and the Cedi king Damaghoṣa, was the incarnation of the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu. We are also told that, upon his death by decapitation, Śiśupāla “entered” Kṣṇa. In the Hindu purāṇas, the relationship between Viṣṇu-Kṣṇa and Śiśupāla is placed into a much larger context. The purāṇas tell us that Kṣṇa's father Vasudeva had five sisters, and that Śiśupāla was the son of his sister Śrutaśravā.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Similarly, we are told that DantavaktraFootnote ¹⁰⁶ was the son of the Karūṣa king Vddhaśarman and Vasudeva's sister Śrutadevā,Footnote ¹⁰⁷ though the Brahma Purāṇa claims Ekalavya as the son of Śrutadevā, and has Dantavaktra as the son of another sister named Pthukīrti.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ As Vasudeva's sister Pthā/Kuntī was the mother of the Pāṇḍavas, this now makes first cousins of Kṣṇa, the Pāṇḍavas, Śiśupāla, Dantavaktra and Ekalavya.

The purāṇas also inform us that Śiśupāla was not merely Hiraṇyakaśipu in a former life, killed by Viṣṇu as Narasiṁha, but also the rākṣasa Rāvaṇa, killed by Viṣṇu as Rāma, son of Daśaratha.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ In Viṣṇu Purāṇa 4.15, we are told that as a result of his keeping Viṣṇu in his thoughts always, Śiśupāla was united with Viṣṇu upon his death. As this was the third time that Viṣṇu had killed this “same” demon, the question arises as to why the miraculous absorption happened on the death of Śiśupāla and not on either of the previous occasions: the reason given is that Hiraṇyakaśipu did not recognize Viṣṇu in the Narasiṁha form, and Rāvaṇa was so engrossed in his love for Sītā that he mistook Rāmacandra for a mortal. Only as Śiśupāla did the demon consciously realize that his death came at the hands of Viṣṇu.Footnote ¹¹⁰

A more comprehensive reason for Śiśupāla's absorption the third time around is provided in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and clearly alluded to in the Padma Purāṇa. The account of the slaying of Śiśupāla in Bhāgavata 10.74 is brief. In Bhāgavata 10.74.43, Kṣṇa decapitates Śiśupāla with his discus, and two verses later it is said that a light which arose from Śiśupāla then entered into Kṣṇa like a meteor. The text goes on to comment: “Meditating [on Viṣṇu-Kṣṇa] with his thoughts consumed by an innate hostility for a triad of births, [Śiśupāla] went to a state of absorption – one's state of mind indeed determines one's [future] state of being”.Footnote ¹¹¹

The triad of births is explained earlier in the Bhāgavata, first in 3.15–19 and again in 7.1. Briefly, there were two doorkeepers named Jaya and Vijaya stationed outside Viṣṇu's great hall in Vaikuṇṭha. One day they made the grave mistake of barring entrance to a group of divine sages led by Sanaka. As a result of the sages’ indignation, Jaya and Vijaya were both cursed to spend three lives outside of Vaikuṇṭha before they could return. In this context, they first became Hiraṇyakaśipu and his brother Hiraṇyākṣa, then Rāvaṇa and his brother Kumbhakarṇa, and finally Śiśupāla and Dantavaktra.Footnote ¹¹² While the absorption of Śiśupāla by Kṣṇa is often remarked upon in the purāṇas,Footnote ¹¹³ that of Dantvaktra is largely glossed over. The Padma Purāṇa, however, ties up all the loose ends by immediately following the account of the absorption of the decapitated Śiśupāla with the death-by-mace and absorptionFootnote ¹¹⁴ of Dantavaktra, who had come to Mathurā to kill Kṣṇa after hearing of Śiśupāla's murder.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The text sums up by stating that, “Thus, through the pretence of Sanaka's curse but actually for the Lord's amusement, Jaya and Vijaya, having descended to earth, were killed by the Lord alone in a triad of births, and then reached enlightenment; at the end of their triad of births, they attained release”.Footnote ¹¹⁶

Pauṇḍraka in the Hindu purāṇas

The shadowy character of Pauṇḍraka Vāsudeva in the Mahābhārata begins to crystallize in the purāṇas, though in a multitude of conflicting forms. The epithet Vāsudeva is occasionally justified patronymically by trying to make him out to be a son of Vasudeva,Footnote ¹¹⁷ but most often Pauṇḍraka simply arrogantly adopts the epithet “Vāsudeva” as an indication that he is Viṣṇu incarnate. His association with the land of PuṇḍraFootnote ¹¹⁸ is almost never explored, and he is most often associated with Vārāṇāsī/Kāśī, either as its king or a friend and ally of its king.Footnote ¹¹⁹

The Mahābhārata itself contains no account whatsoever of any battle between Kṣṇa and Pauṇḍraka. Probably the earliest version of Kṣṇa's slaying of Pauṇḍraka is in the Harivaṁśa, Bhaviṣya Parvan, chapters 90–101, wherein Pauṇḍraka convinced his allies to assail Dvārakā and kill Kṣṇa. In the end, Kṣṇa used his cakra to cut Pauṇḍraka to pieces.Footnote ¹²⁰ It is interesting that throughout much of this account, Pauṇḍraka is referred to simply as “Vāsudeva”, and even in his fight with Kṣṇa, the isolated name “Vāsudeva” not infrequently refers to Pauṇḍraka rather than Kṣṇa. In the purāṇas I have examined, the only other time Pauṇḍraka actually comes to Dvārakā is found in the Padma Purāṇa; otherwise, their battle always takes place at Kāśī.

Later versions of Pauṇḍraka's story seem to become embroiled in the vaiṣṇava sectarian story of the burning of Kāśī. In Viṣṇu Purāṇa 5.34, King Pauṇḍraka sent a messenger to Kṣṇa in Dvārakā and demanded that Kṣṇa relinquish the cakra Sudarśana.Footnote ¹²¹ Kṣṇa then came to Kāśī, whose king was an ally to Pauṇḍraka, and released the cakra, which cut Pauṇḍraka to pieces. Kṣṇa then killed the king of Kāśī with arrows and returned to Dvārakā. A female deity (k tyā) with the (supposed) power to kill Kṣṇa, created by Śiva at the behest of the indignant people of Kāśī, came to Dvārakā to destroy Kṣṇa. Kṣṇa's cakra then chased the k tyā all the way back to Kāśī and razed the city to the ground. At this point, the central aspect of the story seems to have shifted from Kṣṇa's victory over Pauṇḍraka to Viṣṇu-Kṣṇa's superiority over Śiva. Interesting variants of this story are found in Brahma Purāṇa 98, Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.66, Skanda Purāṇa 2.2.12; 7.1.99, and Padma Purāṇa 6.251.Footnote ¹²²

Although certainly not comprehensive, this brief review of the depictions of Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla and Pauṇḍraka in the Mahābhārata and Hindu purāṇas should suffice to demonstrate that the mythology surrounding these three characters was far from static in the Hindu tradition, and that there is ample room to explore not only how this evolving Hindu mythology may have influenced the Jaina tradition (Section III), but also how Jaina versions may have, in turn, influenced the Hindus (Section IV).

Mathurā and Dvārakā

Our first question is: why did the Jainas settle on Jarāsandha as Kṣṇa's chief rival? As I will discuss in greater detail below, when the rivals of the vāsudevas first appear in Jaina texts, they are simply a list of names, but there is no list that fails to declare Jarāsandha as Kṣṇa's rival. As mentioned above, it is possible that the Jainas’ choice of Jarāsandha may reflect an earlier tradition no longer found in Hindu texts, in which Kṣṇa killed Jarāsandha himself, but in the complete absence of supporting evidence, this hypothesis carries little weight. It is equally possible that the Jainas chose Jarāsandha precisely because Kṣṇa did not kill him in the Hindu versions, thereby providing a clear point of distinction. Nevertheless, it is worth considering why Jarāsandha was chosen.

One obvious choice of a single nemesis for Kṣṇa would have been Kaṁsa. Although the Mahābhārata suggests that Viṣṇu incarnated on earth as Kṣṇa in order to relieve the earth of her demonic burden in general, certain purāṇic passages specifically suggest that the purpose of this incarnation was to rid the earth of Kaṁsa and his demonic cronies.Footnote ¹²⁴ But there are good reasons why Kaṁsa would not be chosen by Jainas as Kṣṇa's chief rival. As noted by Edwin Bryant,Footnote ¹²⁵ Kṣṇa mythology in the Hindu tradition may be neatly divided into Vraj and post-Vraj periods, roughly delineated by childhood (Mathurā/Vraj) and adulthood (Dvārakā), respectively. In terms of iconographical images of Kṣṇa, the vast majority is representative of the Vraj period,Footnote ¹²⁶ and it is also this period of Kṣṇa's life that became, historically, the primary focus of the Kṣṇa bhakti cult. Here, Kṣṇa is depicted as an adorable and mischievous child, a playful divinity who slays demons with his bare hands as if merely playing around (līlayā), and when a little older, as a youth who has innumerable trysts with the cowherdesses of Vndāvana. In the Vraj period, Kṣṇa's chief rival is Kaṁsa, said to be the incarnation of the demon Kālanemi.Footnote ¹²⁷ The effective end of the Vraj period is marked by two events: the slaying of Kaṁsa, and the education of Kṣṇa and Balarāma in the use of weapons by Sāndīpani. Soon after the latter occurs, Kṣṇa and Balarāma, now armed warriors, retreat under military pressure to Dvārakā. It is from Dvārakā that the adult Kṣṇa is involved in the slayings of Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla, Pauṇḍraka.Footnote ¹²⁸

I propose that the miraculous stories relating to Kṣṇa as an infant and young adolescent in Vraj, culminating in the slaying of Kaṁsa, were not calculated to attract Jainas or any other Indian religious tradition outside of the Kṣṇa cult. As Goldman has noted,Footnote ¹²⁹ infancy-childhood (including memories of this period) is a time of life almost universally ignored in Sanskrit literature. The circumstances surrounding the conception and birth of important characters (including the Jaina tīrthaṅkaras) often draw significant fanfare, but the period of life between birth and mid- to late-teens is quickly glossed over. We see this, for example, in Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita, where the period between the bodhisattva's birth and marriage is covered in just five verses (2.19–24). Likewise, the time between the birth of Rāma in Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa (1.17.6) and the completion of his education (1.17.21) is brief and unremarkable, and the childhood period of the five Pāṇḍavas is not treated in much greater detail in the Mahābhārata.Footnote ¹³⁰

In the biographies of the sixty-three śalākāpuruṣas in Hemacandra's TŚPC, only two include childhood events in any way comparable to those of the young Hindu Kṣṇa: (i) the vāsudeva Kṣṇa himself; and (ii) the final tīrthaṅ-kara Mahāvīra.Footnote ¹³¹ The Jainas do not dwell upon the infant-childhood “miracles” of Kṣṇa, but they do include a few,Footnote ¹³² with the caveat that it was not actually Kṣṇa, but rather his attending guardian deities, who performed the deeds.Footnote ¹³³ Obviously, these miraculous childhood activities in Kṣṇa's biography did not become a paradigmatic feature of the other vāsudevas, perhaps indicating that the Jaina authors were not attracted to them. The degree to which Kṣṇa, as a youth, is described in later Hindu texts as indulging in sexual trysts with any number of women (including married women, not his wives) is no more suited to Jaina morality than that of the Buddhists or Hindus, with the obvious exception of Kṣṇa-cult devotees, who incorporate such divine behaviour into their theology and identify with the women rather than Kṣṇa. It was perhaps the reluctance fully to embrace this Vraj-based Kṣṇa that essentially removed the possibility of Kaṁsa becoming Kṣṇa's chief rival in the Jaina tradition. Kṣṇa's slaying of Kaṁsa in the Jaina tradition is certainly fated, and serves as a prelude to the slaying of Jarāsandha, but the role played by Kaṁsa in Kṣṇa's biography does not become a paradigmatic feature in the biographies of vāsudevas in general.

In the post-Vraj period, however, the Hindu Kṣṇa is depicted more as an epic hero than a divine miracle worker.Footnote ¹³⁴ He engages in political intrigue and occasionally open battle,Footnote ¹³⁵ where he uses weapons (or other people) to slay his foes. The Jainas were already comfortable with kings and heroes in the worldly realm, including their own cakravartins and their alleged close association with King Śreṇika of Magadha, and it would not be difficult to incorporate Hindu epic heroes into their mythology by making them semi-cakravartins or ardhacakrins, as both the vāsudevas and prativāsudevas are said to be. There may even have been a special affinity for the heroic Kṣṇa of Dvārakā, who, like the Jainas themselves, migrated from Mathurā to the Saurāṣṭra region, possibly under political pressure.Footnote ¹³⁶ That Dvārakā held special importance in the Jaina Universal History is indicated by the fact that five of the nine vāsudevas of the current avasarpiṇī used it as their capital, including the first vāsudeva Tripṣṭha, a past life of Mahāvīra himself.

In Kṣṇa's post-Vraj adult life, there was no rival more powerful or daunting than Jarāsandha, especially as described in the Hindu purāṇas. Moreover, unlike Kaṁsa, Jarāsandha is specifically identified in the Mahābhārata as a universal sovereign, and Kṣṇa himself admits to Yudhiṣṭhira that the flight from Mathurā to Dvārakā was out of fear of Jarāsandha. For these reasons, I suggest that Jarāsandha became the obvious choice for the Jainas when deciding upon Kṣṇa's chief rival.

The conflation of Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla, and Pauṇḍraka

The second question is: how did the Hindu Jarāsandha become a Jaina prativāsudeva? To put it succinctly, I propose that the Jainas conflated the Hindu characters Jarāsandha, Śiśupāla, and Pauṇḍraka into a single nemesis. Standing at Dvārakā and facing eastward, the Caidya (Śiśupāla), Māgadhan (Jarāsandha), and Pauṇḍra (Pauṇḍraka) regions are almost in a perfect line, and in the Mahābhārata, these three regions, in this order, were conquered by Bhīma during the digvijaya. If these three regions, with their respective rulers, were to be conflated, then a single, powerful, hostile foe from the east emerges.Footnote ¹³⁷ The result was a new Jarāsandha, still the powerful king of Magadha and universal sovereign (or ardhacakrin),Footnote ¹³⁸ but now also a sort of false or anti-vāsudeva (like Pauṇḍraka), and now killed by Kṣṇa himself via cakra-decapitation (like Śiśupāla).Footnote ¹³⁹

Using the war between Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha as a template, which pitted vāsudeva against prativāsudeva, the Jainas then read it back into their history claiming that, like the periodic appearance of tīrthaṅkaras or cakravartins, this cosmic battle has been, and will be, repeated an infinite number of times in Bharatavarṣa. In an effort to demonstrate this more concretely, they produced lists of names of the nine vāsudevas and nine prativāsudevas of the current avasarpiṇī, and later composed new versions of the formulaic battle using these new characters. The story of the Rāmāyaṇa was already well suited to this pattern, with its two heroic brothersFootnote ¹⁴⁰ and their powerful adversary Rāvaṇa. As it was well known that the events described in the Rāmāyaṇa were said to have taken place before those of the Mahābhārata, the vāsudeva Lakṣmaṇa and prativāsudeva Rāvaṇa were placed anterior to Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha. The remaining seven vāsudeva-prativāsudeva pairs were located anterior to Lakṣmaṇa and Rāvaṇa.

The prativāsudevas as śalākāpuruṣas

Our third question is: when did these prativāsudevas become śalākāpuruṣas? It is clear from a brief survey of the literature, beginning with the Śvetāmbara canon, that it took quite some time. There is no information on baladevas, vāsudevas, or prativāsudevas in either the Ācārāṅga or Sūtrak tāṅga Sūtras, the first books of which are generally considered the oldest of the extant Śvetāmbara canon.Footnote ¹⁴¹Sthānāṅga Sūtra 3.1.117–20 cites three recurring lineages (vaṁśas) of śalākāpuruṣas Footnote ¹⁴² that appear in Bharatavarṣa in each utsarpiṇī and avasarpiṇī: that of the tīrthaṅkaras (arahaṁtā), the cakravartins (cakkavaṭṭī) and the baladeva-vāsudevas, also referred to collectively as the “pairs of daśārhas” (dasāramaṇḍala)Footnote ¹⁴³Sthānāṅga 8.77–80, laying out the geographic distribution of śalākāpuruṣas on Jambūdvīpa, refers only to tīrthaṅkaras, cakravartins, baladevas and vāsudevas. The catuḥpañcāśatsthānaka of the Samavāyāṅga Sūtra informs us that in each utsarpiṇī and avasarpiṇī in Bharatakṣetra, fifty-four śalākāpuruṣas Footnote ¹⁴⁴ always have and always will arise: twenty-four tīrthaṅkaras, twelve cakravartins, nine baladevas and nine vāsudeva. Footnote ¹⁴⁵ The Nāyādhammakahāo gives a biography of Draupadī in which Kṣṇa appears, though there is no mention of Jarāsandha;Footnote ¹⁴⁶ there are, however, some interesting general statements made about śalākāpuruṣas, but only tīrthaṅ-karas, cakravartins, baladevas and vāsudevas.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ The Antak ddaśāḥ and Uttarādhyayana likewise contain some stories that include Kṣṇa as a character,Footnote ¹⁴⁸ but there is no mention of his war with Jarāsandha or of the latter's status.Footnote ¹⁴⁹

Jambūdvīpa Prajñapti Sūtra 7.208 refers to the maximum and minimum numbers of each class of śalākāpuruṣas at any one time on Jambūdvīpa, but again includes only tīrthaṅkaras, cakravartins, baladevas and vāsudevas. In the biography of Mahāvīra found in the Kalpa Sūtra, two general statements regarding śalākāpuruṣas are found: first, in the context of the embryo transfer of Mahāvīra from a brāhmaṇa to a kṣatriya womb, it is said that arhats (i.e. tīrthaṅkaras), cakravartins, baladevas and vāsudevas are always born into noble kṣatriya families;Footnote ¹⁵⁰ second, regarding the number of auspicious dreams heralding the birth of an illustrious person, it is said that fourteen dreams herald the birth of an arhat or cakravartin, seven herald a vāsudeva, four a baladeva, and a single dream heralds a māṇḍalika.Footnote ¹⁵¹ The term māṇḍalika generally refers to a minor ruler or provincial governor, and is not an ideal synonym of prativāsudeva, though it is conceivable that the term māṇḍalika is meant to refer to the enemies of the vāsudevas. As there is no explicit mention of prativāsudevas in any of these references, it is safe to conclude that they were not originally numbered among the śalākāpuruṣas, and the Samavāyāṅga even explicitly sets the number at fifty-four.

In the third appendix to the Samavayāṅga, however, in a series of passages providing names, descriptions, and demographic details of śalākāpuruṣas of the past, present, and future time-cycles in Bharatavarṣa, we are provided with the names of the so-called pratiśatrus (Pkt. paḍisattus) of the vāsudevas of the current avasarpiṇī, including Rāvaṇa and Jarāsandha. It is said that the pratiśatrus possess the cakra-weapon, and that they are killed by the vāsudeva with their own cakra.Footnote ¹⁵² They are not, however, explicitly named as śalākāpuruṣas. Sthānāṅga 9.19–20 provides the same information almost word for word and Bhagavatī Vyākhyāprajñapti 5.5.89 refers us to the Samavāyāṅga for details on the baladevas, vāsudevas, and pratiśatrus. The Āvaśyaka-niryukti mentions the names of the nine pratiśatrus (paḍisattū) in the bhāṣya verses,Footnote ¹⁵³ where Jarāsandha is referred to as “Jarāsiṁdhū”. In the discussion surrounding these verses, the focus is upon the tīrthaṅkaras, cakravartins, baladevas and vāsudevas – there is no hint that the pratiśatrus are considered śalākāpuruṣas.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Elsewhere, the Āvaśyaka-niryukti discusses tīrthaṅkaras, cakravartins, baladevas and vāsudevas without regard to prativāsudevas.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

Turning to non-canonical texts of the Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras, the first extensive treatment of a vāsudeva-prativāsudeva rivalry is found in the Śvetāmbara poet Vimalasūri's third-centuryFootnote ¹⁵⁶Paümacariya. Here, the vāsudeva is Lakṣmaṇa and his rival prativāsudeva is Rāvaṇa. Vimalasūri devotes Canto 20 to some general statements about śalākāpuruṣas, though he stops short of explicitly naming the prativāsudevas as śalākāpuruṣas. Rather, he lists tīrthaṅkaras, cakravartins, baladevas and “those beginning with vāsudevas”, which may be intended to imply the prativāsudevas without explicitly naming them.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ He does, however, provide the standard list of prativāsudevas, calling them first pratiśatrus (paḍisattū)Footnote ¹⁵⁸ and then prativāsudevas (paḍivāsudeva).Footnote ¹⁵⁹ The Digambara poet Raviṣena's seventh-century Padma-Purāṇa (or -Carita),Footnote ¹⁶⁰ which represents the first work of Jaina story literature in Sanskrit, closely follows Vimalasūri's Paümacariya as its model,Footnote ¹⁶¹ and Raviṣeṇa likewise devotes his own Chapter 20 to a description of the śalākāpuruṣas. Of the 250 verses in the chapter, only four (242–5) are devoted to the prativāsudevas, where they are referred to as praticakrins.Footnote ¹⁶² Here, Raviṣeṇa does not explicitly refer to them as śalālāpuruṣas, but neither does he explicitly use this term (or its variants) for the tīrthaṅkaras, cakravartins, vāsudevas or baladevas.

The Digambara poet Punnāṭa Jinasena's eighth-century Sanskrit Harivaṁ-śapurāṇa represents the earliest extant Jaina story of Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha that could rival in length and detail Vimalasūri's treatment of the Rāma story. Harivaṁśapurāṇa 3.171–3 refers to the śalākāpuruṣasFootnote ¹⁶³ that arise in Bharatavarṣa, and the vāsudevas and prativāsudevas are explicitly grouped into one compound (keśavapratiśatravaḥ). It appears from the context that both are considered śalākāpuruṣas. Harivaṁśapurāṇa 3.193–5 refers to the biographies of people born into the harivaṁśa that will be covered in the text, including those of the Bhāratas, the tīrthaṅkaras (jinas), the cakravartins, the baladevas (halin), vāsudevas and the prativāsudevas (pratidviṣ). Thus, of the texts I have examined, Punnāṭa Jinasena's Harivaṁśapurāṇa appears to be the first explicitly to include the prativāsudevas as śalākāpuruṣas.

Two ninth-century texts provide an interesting contrast on the issue at hand, as made apparent by their titles: (i) the Svetāmbara poet Śīlaṅka's Prākrit Caüppaṇṇamahāpurisa-cariya (Biographies of the Fifty-Four Great Beings);Footnote ¹⁶⁴ and (ii) the combined work (in Sanskrit) of the Digambara poets Jinasena (Ādipurāṇa) and Guṇabhadra (Uttarapurāṇa) entitled the Triṣaṣṭilakṣaṇamahāpurāṇasaṅgraha (The Great Compendium of the Sixty-Three IllustriousFootnote ¹⁶⁵ Beings).Footnote ¹⁶⁶ Whereas the former has consciously excluded the prativāsudevas from the category of śalākāpuruṣas, the latter fully accepts them. The tenth-century Digambara poet Puṣpadanta followed the lead of Jinasena/Guṇabhadra in his Apabhraṁśa Mahāpurāṇa entitled Tisaṭṭhi-mahāpurisaguṇālaṁkāra (Ornament of the Virtues of the Sixty-Three Great Beings).Footnote ¹⁶⁷ This now brings us back to Hemacandra's twelfth-century TŚPC, by which time the official number of śalākāpuruṣas appears to be set at sixty-three once and for all.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Thus, it appears that the rivals (pratiśatrus) of the vāsudevas officially became prativāsudeva-śalākāpuruṣas by the eighth century in the Digambara tradition, and by the twelfth century (or earlier) in Śvetāmbara texts.

Death by Cakra-decapitation

Finally, if, as I suggest, the Hindu character Pauṇḍraka was influential in the development of the Jaina conception of these rivals as “prati-vāsudevas”, the Hindu character Śiśupāla was likewise influential in the manner in which these prativāsudevas were killed: decapitation by cakra. But this too was something that took centuries to become a paradigmatic feature of the vāsudeva-prativāsudeva battles. The earliest Jaina references to the slaying of the pratiśatrus state merely that the pratiśatrus possess a cakra-weapon and are killed with their own cakra.

In Vimalasūri's Paümacariya, Lakṣmaṇa does kill Rāvaṇa with the latter's own cakra, but he does not decapitate him. Instead, the cakra splits open Rāvaṇa's chest.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ Furthermore, the cakra, when first hurled by Rāvaṇa, does not strike and temporarily render unconscious Lakṣmaṇa, but merely circumambulates him and hovers by his side. The reason why death by decapitation was impossible in this instance, as Vimalasūri informs us, is that Rāvaṇa had acquired the bahurūpā vidyā, whereby he would grow two heads for every one cut off; Lakṣmaṇa did, in fact, cut off Rāvaṇa's head, but to no avail.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ In the Harivaṁśapurāṇa, Punnāṭa Jinasena followed Vimalasūri's pattern: the cakra, hurled by Jarāsandha, merely circumambulates Kṣṇa, and then Kṣṇa splits open Jarāsandha's chest with the cakra rather than decapitating him.Footnote ¹⁷¹

The first Jaina work explicitly to cover the biographies of all sixty-three śalākāpuruṣas is the combined Ādipurāṇa-Uttarapurāṇa of Jinasena-Guṇabhadra. With the death of his mentor Jinasena, who had completed only the stories of the first tīrthaṅkara ṣabha and first cakravartin Bharata, Guṇabhadra was left with the monumental task of completing the biographies of the remaining sixty-one śalākāpuruṣas, including all nine baladeva-vāsudeva-prativāsudeva triads. In no case does Guṇabhadra describe the vāsudeva being knocked unconscious by the cakra. In five cases,Footnote ¹⁷² he mentions that the cakra circumambulated the vāsudeva (including Lakṣmaṇa and Kṣṇa), and in the remaining casesFootnote ¹⁷³ he ignores the issue altogether. As for the exact method of death-by-cakra, Guṇabhadra leaves the matter unstated for the first six prativāsudevas, but for the last three, including both Rāvaṇa and Jarāsandha, Guṇabhadra explicitly cites decapitation.

By the time of Hemacandra's TŚPC, the confrontation between vāsudeva and prativāsudeva has become highly standardized: (i) while engaged in battle, the prativāsudeva flings his cakra at the vāsudeva, but the cakra hits the vāsudeva with its flat side and merely knocks him unconscious; (ii) instead of returning to the prativāsudeva, the cakra hovers near to the vāsudeva; (iii) when the vāsudeva quickly recovers, he grasps the cakra, flings it back at the prativāsudeva, and decapitates him. This order of events is repeated in the first seven of the nine vāsudeva-prativāsudeva battles. In the case of Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha, the only element not made explicit is Kṣṇa being temporarily knocked unconscious by the cakra, though it might be implied. The only significant deviation from this pattern in Hemacandra's text is his account of the battle between Lakṣmaṇa and Rāvaṇa, where he, unlike Guṇabhadra, follows Vimalasūri in having Rāvaṇa's chest split open by the cakra.Footnote ¹⁷⁴

It is curious that Hemacandra explicitly describes each of the first seven vāsudevas as being temporarily knocked unconscious by the cakra, rather than merely being circumambulated by it.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ This represents a departure from both Vimalasūri and Punnāṭa Jinasena, and I might suggest an origin for this feature, relating originally to Lakṣmaṇa's fight with Rāvaṇa. Of all the vāsudevas, Lakṣmaṇa is the only one to have had two important face-to-face encounters with his prativāsudeva rival: in their first encounter, Rāvaṇa hit Lakṣmaṇa with a magic spear that knocked him unconscious until he was healed by a virtuous woman named Viśalyā;Footnote ¹⁷⁶ in the second encounter, Lakṣmaṇa killed Rāvaṇa with the cakra. The story of the cakra momentarily knocking the vāsudeva unconscious, a paradigmatic event for vāsudevas in the TŚPC, appears to represent a compression of these two encounters into one.

Mutual influence

The assertion that the Hindu characters Jarāsandhā, Śiśupāla and Pauṇḍraka were instrumental in the formation of a paradigmatic rival for the Jaina vāsudevas, while plausible, is merely a suggestion, but one that has little competition: the circumstances in which the Jainas created their categories of baladevas, vāsudevas, and prativāsudevas are something of a mystery. Furthermore, this explanation in no way precludes the possibility that earlier elements of Hindu Kṣṇa mythology may survive now only in Jaina texts, such as the death of Jarāsandha coming at the hands of Kṣṇa himself.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ The Jainas, established in the city of Mathurā prior to the Common Era, may have had access to stories in the Kṣṇa cycle that fell out of use or were subsequently modified in the Hindu tradition.

In any case, the evolution of Kṣṇa mythology in the Hindu and Jaina traditions developed, from a relatively early period, in parallel, no doubt with periodic cross-fertilization. That Hindu versions of the epic stories and their characters continued to play a formative role in Jaina versions, even after Jaina versions were well established, is made clear from an examination of Jaina Rāmāyaṇa stories. Raviṣeṇa, for example, clearly took Vimalasūri's distinctively Jaina Paümacaiya as his model, while Saṅghadāsa was heavily influenced by Hindu versions.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ But did the evolving Jaina tradition influence the Hindus? Almost half a century ago, Klaus Bruhn remarked:

Such suggestions notwithstanding, the prevailing scholarly attitude continues to be that, in the realm of mythology, Jainas were the perennial borrowers.Footnote ¹⁸¹ As one among any number of examples, consider Sumitra Bai:

There is truth in this assertion, but the description, “they brought into their own religion whatever they found attractive in other religious systems” is as much or more applicable to Hindus as it is to Jainas.

Another reason scholars have tended to dismiss Jaina influence in the development of Hindu mythology is the belief that Hindus paid no attention to Jaina texts. For example, P.S. Jaini stated:

Examining the Hindu purāṇas merely for evidence of “angry rejoinders” to Jaina slander is perhaps too limited. It is certainly true that Jainas have slandered the Hindus and vice-versa. The original Hindu purāṇic story of Viṣṇu's false avatāra as the Buddha/Jina is as slanderous a rejoinder as we might hope to find, as is Haribhadra's ridicule of Hindu purāṇic mythology in his Dhūrtākhyāna.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ But this is not the only form of interaction for which we should search. Jaini himself provided an excellent example of what might be dubbed a “refinement” or “nuancing” of Hindu mythology through the quiet absorption of the Jaina tīrthaṅkara ṣabha as a minor avatāra of ViṣṇuFootnote ¹⁸⁵ in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and he does admit that:

Part of the reason why Jaini proposes that Jaina texts were little noticed by the Hindu purāṇic authors is that only two characters which might otherwise be deemed the exclusive property of the Jainas, i.e. the tīrthaṅkara ṣabha and his cakravartin son Bharata, have appeared in Hindu purāṇas. But it is also in the realm of shared characters such as Kṣṇa and Jarāsandha that we ought to look for evidence of mutual influence.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ In what follows, I will propose a couple of instances where the Jainas may have influenced, or provoked refinements in, Hindu mythology.

Jaina influence on Hindu Kṣṇa mythology

Descriptions of the five recurring character types that make up the Jaina Universal History (tīrthaṅkaras, cakravartins, baladevas, vāsudevas, and prativāsudevas), while at times lacking in narrative creativity, are certainly paradigmatically crisp and well defined. Even a cursory examination of the Hindu purāṇas is sufficient to demonstrate that the manifestations or avatāras of Viṣṇu are anything but well defined. While any rudimentary textbook on Hinduism is sure to mention the ten avatāras of Viṣṇu, most of the purāṇas simply refuse to abide by so confining a number, and even when they pretend to, they do not agree upon exactly which ten are to be counted.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ Purāṇic avatāras of Viṣṇu abound, as do theories of his incarnation. As Kirfel suggested, it may be worth considering the notion that the Jaina Universal History played a role in the development of the ten avatāras doctrine.Footnote ¹⁸⁹

According to this doctrine, Viṣṇu has incarnated in the world nine times already, and will in the future incarnate a tenth time as Kalkin. Perhaps the earliest crystallization of the ten avatāras doctrine is found at the so-called Gupta Daśāvatāra Temple in Deogarh (circa sixth–seventh century ce),Footnote ¹⁹⁰ though it was sporadically adopted in the purāṇas as well. The ten avatāras were also popularized by Kṣemendra in his eleventh-century Daśāvatāracarita and in Jayadeva's twelfth-century Gītagovinda.Footnote ¹⁹¹ The fact that the Jaina Universal History claims nine appearances of a vāsudeva in Bharatavarṣa in each ut- and ava-sarpiṇī may have been a determining factor in the selection of nine avatāras of Viṣṇu in the ten avatāras doctrine (the tenth being reserved for the future). Apart from the possibility of Jaina influence, there does not seem to be the slightest trend towards a doctrine of (only) ten avatāras in the Hindu purāṇas, and it may be significant that Viṣṇu's false avatāra as a heretical śramaṇic teacher (Buddha/Jina) was probably the last of the ten avatāras to gain prominence.Footnote ¹⁹²

It is also worth noting the extent to which the importance of the Hindu character Jarāsandha steadily increased in the purāṇas, to the point at which, in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of Kṣṇa's efforts to rid the earth of her demonic burden comes in the form of recurring battles with Jarāsandha's massive armies. By comparison, the deaths of Kaṁsa and his demonic cronies, as well as all the warriors in the Bhārata war, were collectively a drop in the ocean. It would not stretch credulity too far to suggest that the importance of Kṣṇa's rivalry with Jarāsandha in the Jaina tradition made some contribution to this impressive development.

Another place where the crisply defined and recurring Jaina vāsudeva-prativāsudeva paradigm may have had an impact upon the Hindu tradition is in the mythological development of Śiśupāla. As noted above, Śiśupāla, proclaimed in the Mahābhārata to be the incarnation of the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu, is in the purāṇas likewise identified with the demon Rāvaṇa. There is no hint of such a thing in either of the Hindu epics. Beyond this, we also see, for example in the relatively late Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the notion that Hiraṇyakaśipu-Hiraṇyākṣa, Rāvaṇa-Kumbhakarṇa, and Śiśupāla-Dantavaktra were all earthly incarnations of Viṣṇu's dimwitted doorkeepers Jaya and Vijaya. In this scenario, we have essentially the same Viṣṇu (as Narasiṁha/Varāha, as Rāma,Footnote ¹⁹³ and as Kṣṇa), slaying essentially the same two “demons” over and over. It seems plausible that the development of such a narrowly-defined recurring struggle was inspired by the recurring battles between the Jaina vāsudevas and prativāsudevas. A similar sort of consolidation is also witnessed in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, where Vasudeva and Devakī, the parents of Kṣṇa, are likewise said to have been the parents of two previous incarnations as well: Pśnigarbha and Vāmana (the dwarf who thwarted Bali).Footnote ¹⁹⁴

Such developments in the mythology of the Hindu purāṇas may be evidence of a sort of ongoing conversation between the Hindu and Jaina traditions, and there is no reason automatically and uncritically to default to the assumption that any shared mythology must necessarily have been developed first by the Hindus and later stolen by the Jainas. In order to strengthen this argument, however, a great deal of further investigation will be required, a task necessarily hampered by the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of accurately dating narrative material (even when individual texts may be assigned a single author and a certain date, as is often the case in post-canonical Jaina literature). In any case, it is ironic that Jaina versions of the Indian epics and their related mythologies have often been excluded from serious scholarly consideration on the basis that the Jainas were guilty merely of doing what everyone else did, i.e. tailoring popular tales to specific doctrinal ends. It may be hoped that placing Jaina sources next to their Hindu counterparts will lead us to ask new questions of both, and we may find that the two traditions have interacted much more than is currently believed.