After six months hard work I have finally come to the end of the work following my trip to Java in May, 2019, with this publication of the text and photographs for Krishna’s Story which is told on the reliefs at Prambanan.
This compliments my previously published photographs of Rāma’s story, which is also illustrated at Prambanan on the Śiva and Brahmā temples there. Krishna’s story is told of the Viṣṇu temple, which is situated north of the main Śiva temple.
The story is told on 30 reliefs, but I have only been able to identify 14 of these, and a few of those are not 100% sure. Unlike Rāma’s story, not much scholarly attention has been paid to these reliefs, and their identification is in most cases lacking.
As with the previous story I have summarised the whole story at the top of the page, and given both story and description of the relief, pointing out where the story differs from the classical tellings in Sanskrit, which I have used as a basis for the book, as these are the most widely known at present.
Krishna’s story is full of interest and quite endearing, especially his early years as a mischievous boy living amongst the cowherders in a pastoral setting. Once he had grown up he moved back to the city of Mathurā and later founded the city of Dvāraka, but it is this section that is hard to identify, despite reading 1000s of pages of stories!
I have also now updated my Prambanan photo album, and removed the unidentified relief photographs from the original collection, and also added an introduction to the site, now that I have managed to study it for the work on Rāma and Krishna.
The two stories of Rāma and Krishna will eventually be compiled into a book and published, as with my work on Borobudur. I hope people will enjoy this latest work, and find it useful to understanding more about the ancient Indonesian Hindu-Buddhists kingdoms.
Looks impressive but…. in a story of Kṛṣṇa and Rāmā there seem a less importance is given to the animal like a horse as shown in one of its background. So, its visual interpretation and the story lining has to be reviewed once again….