The Abduction of Rukmini

Politics, Genealogy and Theology in 87–90

Abstract

This article examines the Harivamsa’s rendering of Vasudeva Krsna’s encounter with and marriage to Rukmini of Vidarbha (HV 87–90), and proposes that this episode of Krsna’s life is of special importance to the Harivamsa’s larger concern to develop in full the Mahabharata’s partial portrait of the adult Vasudeva Krsna. I argue that the Harivamsa’s basic work of unpacking Krsna’s adult identity advances on three fronts simultaneously: genealogical, political and theological, and that it is especially by recounting Krsna’s relationship with Rukmini that the poets are able to develop all at once some of the key political, genealogical and theological dimensions of Krsna’s identity revealed only partially in the Mahabharata.