The death of Kansa brings to a close the first phase of Krishna’s career.  His primary aim has now been accomplished.  The tyrant whose excesses have for so long vexed the righteous is dead.  Earth’s prayer has been granted.  Krishna has reached, in fact, a turning-point in his life and on what he now decides the rest of his career depends.  If he holds that his earthly mission is ended, he must quit his mortal body, resume his sublime celestial state and once again become the Vishnu whose attributes have been praised by Akrura when journeying to Brindaban.  If, on the other hand, he regards his mission as still unfulfilled, is he to return to Brindaban or should he remain instead at Mathura?  At Brindaban, his foster parents, Nanda and Yasoda, his friends the cowherds and his loves the cowgirls long for his return.  He has spent idyllic days in their company.  He has saved them from the dangers inherent in forest life.  He has kept a host of demon marauders at bay.  At the same time, his magnetic charms have aroused the most intense devotion.  If he returns, it will be to dwell with people who have doted on him as a child, adored him as a youth and who love him as a man.  On the other hand, Mathura, it is clear, has also strong claims.  Although reared and bred among the cowherds, Krishna is, in fact, a child of Mathura.  Although smuggled from the prison immediately afterwards, it was in Mathura that he left his mother’s womb.  His true father is Vasudeva, a leader of the Yadava nobility and member of the Mathura ruling caste.  His true mother, Devaki, is related to the Mathura royal family.  If his youth and infancy have been passed among the cowherds, this was due to special reasons.  His father’s substitution of him at birth for Yasoda’s baby daughter was dictated by the dire perils which would have confronted him had he remained with his mother.  It was, at most, a desperate expedient for saving his life and although the tyrant’s unremitting search for the child who was to kill him prolonged his stay in Brindaban, his transportation there was never intended as a permanent arrangement.  A deception has been practised.  Nanda and Yasoda regard and believe Krishna to be their son.  None the less there has been no formal adoption and it is Vasudeva and Devaki who are his parents.

It is this which decides the issue.  As one who by birth and blood belongs to Mathura, Krishna can hardly desert it now that the main obstacle to his return—­the tyrant Kansa—­has been removed.  His plain duty is to his parents and his castemen.  Painful therefore as the severance must be, he decides to abandon the cowherds and see them no more.  He is perhaps fortified in his decision by the knowledge that even in his relations with the cowgirls a climax has been reached.  A return would merely repeat their nightly ecstasies, not achieve a fresh experience.  Finally although Kansa himself has been killed, his demon allies are still at large.  Mathura and Krishna’s kinsmen, the Yadavas, are far from safe.  He can hardly desert them until their interests have been permanently safeguarded and by then he will have become a feudal princeling, the very reverse of the young cowherd who night after night has thrilled the cowgirls with his flute.