Meanwhile Krishna is carefully maintaining relations with the Pandavas.  We have seen how immediately after the slaying of the tyrant he sends an envoy to inquire after his aunt Kunti, the sister of his father, and mother of the five Pandavas.  We have also noticed how during a visit to the Pandava court, he has acquired a new queen, Kalindi.  He now embarks on several courses of action, each of which is designed to cement their relations.  During a visit to his court, Arjuna, the brother whose lucky shot won Draupadi for the Pandavas, falls in love with Subhadra, Krishna’s sister.  Krishna is delighted to have him as a brother-in-law and as already narrated in the epic, he advises Arjuna to marry her by capture.  A little later Krishna learns that Yudhisthira will shortly proclaim himself a ‘ruler of the world’ and decides to visit the Pandava court to assist at the sacrifice.  He takes a vast army with him and advances on the court with massive splendour.  As he arrives, he learns that Jarasandha whose feud is unabated has now imprisoned twenty thousand rajas, all of whom cry to be released.  Krishna decides that Jarasandha’s demon activities must be ended once for all and taking two of the Pandavas with him, Bhima and Arjuna, he sets out to destroy him.  Jarasandha elects to engage Bhima in single-handed combat and for twenty-seven days the fight proceeds, each wielding a club and neither securing the advantage.  Krishna now learns that Jarasandha can only be killed if he is split in two.  He directs Bhima, therefore, to throw him down, place a foot on one of his thighs and catching the other leg with his hand, tear him asunder.  Bhima does so and in this way Jarasandha is destroyed.  The captive rajas are now released and after returning home they foregather at the Pandavas’ court to assist at the sacrifice.

As arrangements proceed an incident occurs which illustrates yet again the complex situation arising from Krishna’s dual character.  Krishna is God, yet he is also man.  Being a man, it is normally as a man that he is regarded.  Yet from time to time particular individuals sense his Godhead and then he is no longer man but God himself.  Even those, however, who view him as God do so only for brief periods of time and hence the situation is constantly arising in which Krishna is one moment honoured as God and then a moment later is treated as a man.  And it is this situation which now recurs.

As we have already seen in the epic, part of the custom at imperial sacrifices was to offer presents to distinguished guests, and according to the epic the person chosen to receive the first present was Krishna himself.  The Purana changes this by substituting gods for guests.  Yudhisthira is uncertain who should be worshipped first.  ’Who is the great lord of the gods,’ he asks, ‘to whom we should bow our heads?’ To this a Pandava gives a clear answer.  Krishna, he says, is god of gods.  ’No one understands his nature.  He is lord