Another day, Yasoda asks the married cowgirls to assist her in churning milk.  They clean the house, set up a large vessel, prepare the churning staff and string, and start to churn.  Krishna is awakened by the noise and finding no one about comes crying to Yasoda.  ‘I am hungry, mother,’ he says.  ‘Why have you not given me anything to eat?’ And in a fit of petulance he starts to throw the butter about and kick over the pitchers.  Yasoda tells him not to be so naughty, sits him on her lap and gives him some milk.  While she is doing this, a cowgirl tells her that the milk has boiled over and Yasoda jumps up leaving Krishna alone.  While she is away he breaks the pots, scatters the curds, makes a mess of all the rooms and, taking a pot full of butter, runs away with it into the fields.  There he seats himself on an upturned mortar, assembles the other boys and vastly pleased with himself, laughingly shares the butter out.  When Yasoda returns and sees the mess, she seizes a stick and goes to look for Krishna.  She cannot find it in her heart, however, to be angry for long and when Krishna says, ‘Mother, let me go.  I did not do it,’ she laughs and throws the stick away.  Then pretending to be still very angry, she takes him home and ties him to a mortar.  A little later a great crash is heard.  Two huge trees have fallen and when the cowherds hurry to the spot, they find that Krishna has dragged the mortar between the trunks, pulled them down and is quietly sitting between them.[17] Two youths—­by name Nala and Kuvara—­have been imprisoned in the trees and Krishna’s action has released them.  When she sees that Krishna is safe, Yasoda unties him from the mortar and hugs him to her.

This incident of the trees now forces Nanda to make a decision.  The various happenings have been profoundly unnerving and he feels that it is no longer safe to stay in Gokula.  He decides therefore to move a day’s march farther on, to cross the river and settle in the forests of Brindaban.  The cowherds accordingly load up their possessions on carts and the move ensues.[18]

The story now enters its second phase.  Krishna is no longer a mischievous baby, indulging in tantrums yet wringing the heart with his childish antics.  He is now five years old and of an age to make himself useful.  He asks to be allowed to graze the calves.  At first Yasoda is unwilling.  ’We have got so many servants,’ she says.  ’It is their job to take the calves out.  Why go yourself?  You are the protection of my eye-lids and dearer to me than my eyes.’  Krishna, however, insists and in the end she entrusts him and Balarama to the other young cowherds, telling them on no account to leave them alone in the forest, but to bring them safely home.  Her words are, in fact, only too necessary, for Kansa, the tyrant king, is still in quest of the child who is to kill him.  His demon minions are still on the alert, attacking any likely boy, and as Krishna plays with the cowherds and tends the calves, he suffers a further series of attacks.