The Christmas story of the birth of Jesus Christ is famous all over the world. In slightly differing and complementary versions, the gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us how Joseph and Mary travelled to Bethlehem shortly before the birth of Christ. They were poor and suffered many hardships, culminating in having to stay and give birth in a stable. After the birth, the Holy Family had to flee to Egypt as the newborn’s life was threatened by the cruel king Herod.
What is less known is that the story of Jesus Christ has a lot in common with the story of another world famous religious figure, even bearing a similar name. It’s Krishna, the playful divine child, charming cowherd boy and immortal teacher of the Bhagavad Gita. He is regarded as a divine incarnation (‘avatara’) by most Hindus.
The Birth
As legend says, Krishna’s parents, Devaki and Vasudeva, had already been in the dungeon of the tyrannical king Kamsa for several years when Krishna was born. Kamsa was holding them captive because of a prophecy that warned him that the eighth child of his cousin Devaki would destroy him. Just like Herod, who was desperately trying to kill Jesus because he had been told that Jesus was to be the king of the Jews, Kamsa, too, committed the crime of infanticide, killing all of Devaki’s children as soon as they were born. But all his plans were thwarted because the Divine in the form of the Lord Vishnu appeared to Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, announcing that he himself would soon be born as Devaki’s eighth child. He continued by giving instructions as to how the baby was to be taken out of the dungeon immediately after the birth, a venture that Vasudeva managed to carry out with miraculous divine help. Similarly, the infant Jesus also had to be saved from the wrath of the cruel emperor Herod, with the only difference that God warned Mary and Joseph by means of an angel, urging them to flee with the child to Egypt.
Further Parallels
And the resemblance of the lives of Christ and Krishna doesn’t end here. Both grew up among simple people and continued to have special bonds to simple folks throughout their lives (Christ recruited his disciples from fishermen while Krishna grew up among shepherds – gopis and gopas - and all his life, the gopi Radha was to be the woman closest to his heart); both were seen as epitomes of love, peace and compassion; both performed miracles of various kinds; and both eventually died an unnatural, violent death.
Are Christ and Krishna the Same?
In view of these analogies, it is indeed little surprising that there have been speculations that either the Jesus-stories were (at least partially) inspired by the Krishna legends or that Christ and Krishna were actually one and the same person.
In reality, the parallels in the lives of these two great masters probably stem from the fact that both of them were embodiments of great spiritual, universal truths. The importance of Jesus Christ’s birth doesn’t lie in being a unique event in which the one and only savior of mankind (or Christianity) was born, but in the confirmation and implementation of the deepest spiritual truths.
Some of these truths are explored in the article called the inner meaning of Christmas.
