Janmashtami 2029in Kashi

Krishna Janmashtami marks the midnight birth of Sri Krishna on the Ashtami of the dark fortnight of Bhadrapada, when the moon — though waning — was rising in Rohini Nakshatra. The Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana, and Harivamsha all tell the story in close agreement, and the festival's ritual shape — the all-day fast, the midnight unveiling of the image, the rocking of the cradle — replays each beat of it.

The trouble begins at the wedding of Devaki and Vasudeva. Devaki's brother Kamsa, king of Mathura, drives the bridal chariot himself out of affection for his sister. A voice from the sky — the akashvani — announces that Devaki's eighth child will kill him. Kamsa draws his sword; Vasudeva intervenes, promising to surrender every child of Devaki at birth. Kamsa accepts, but locks the couple in his prison. One by one, the first six children of Devaki are taken from her arms and dashed to death. The seventh — Balarama — is mystically transferred to the womb of Rohini in Gokul through the agency of Yogamaya. The eighth pregnancy is Krishna.

As the eighth child quickens in Devaki's womb, all of Mathura senses something. Even Devaki's face glows with a light that frightens Kamsa, who doubles the guards. On the Ashtami of Krishna Paksha in Bhadrapada, at midnight, with Rohini rising and the four-quarter conjunction the astrologers had warned of complete, Krishna is born. The Bhagavata describes him appearing first in his four-armed Vishnu form — bearing shankha, chakra, gada, padma — to Devaki and Vasudeva, who recognise him and bow; then he transforms into an ordinary infant, instructing Vasudeva to carry him to Gokul and exchange him with the newborn girl just delivered to Yashoda, Nanda's wife.

What follows is the great miracle-as-quiet-event. The chains on Vasudeva's feet fall open. The prison doors unlock themselves. The guards, struck by Yogamaya's sleep, do not stir. Vasudeva places the infant in a winnowing basket on his head and steps out into a torrential night; the Yamuna is in flood, swollen by the monsoon, but as Vasudeva enters, the river parts in a path knee-deep to let him through. The serpent Shesha rises behind to shield the baby from the rain. At Gokul Vasudeva finds Yashoda asleep, exchanges the children, returns through the parted river, and the prison locks close behind him. When Kamsa rushes to seize the new infant, the girl-child — the goddess Yogamaya herself in disguise — flies up out of his grasp and warns him: "The one who will kill you is born elsewhere; you cannot find him."

The celebration's detail follows the story: devotees fast until midnight as Devaki and Vasudeva did awaiting the birth; at the stroke of twelve the image of the infant Krishna is unveiled, bathed in panchamrita as Yashoda first bathed him, dressed and laid in a small cradle that the devotees rock as the cowherd women of Gokul did. The 56 dishes (chhappan bhog) are offered as Gokul offered to Krishna who, the tradition says, used to eat eight meals a day as a child for seven days during the Govardhan-lift; the village offered him 56 dishes (8 × 7) to make up for that fast. The midnight darshan is the heart: in the bleakest hour of the lunar cycle, in a prison, in a flood — light arrived.