sexual love.  The second role characterizes him both as cowherd and prince but with important differences of attitude and behaviour.  As a prince, Krishna is wedded first to Rukmini and then to seven other wives, observing on each occasion the requisite formalities.  Even the sixteen thousand one hundred girls whom he rescues from imprisonment receive this formal status.  With all of them Krishna enjoys a variety of sexual pleasures and their love is moral, respectable and approved.  Krishna the prince, in fact, is Krishna the husband.  Krishna the cowherd, on the other hand, is essentially a lover.  The cowgirls whose impassioned love he inspires are all married and in consorting with them he is breaking one of the most solemn requirements of the moral code.  The first relationship has the secure basis of conjugal duty, the second the daring adventurousness of romantic passion.

The same abrupt contrast appears between his character as a cowherd and his character as a prince.  As a youth he mixes freely with the cowherds, behaving with an easy naturalness of manner and obtaining from them an intense devotion.  This devotion is excited by everything he does and whether as a baby crying for the breast, a little boy pilfering butter or a young man teasing the married girls, he exerts a magnetic charm.  At no time does he neglect his prime duty of killing demons but this is subordinated to his innocent delight in living.  He is shown as impatient with old and stereotyped forms of worship, as scorning ordinary morality and treating love as paramount.  Although he acts continually with princely dignity and is always aware of his true character as Vishnu, his impact on others is based more on the understanding of their needs than on their recognition of him as God.  When, at times, Krishna the cowherd is adored as God, he has already been loved as a boy and a young man.  In the later story, this early charm is missing.  Krishna is frequently recognized to be God and is continually revered and respected as a man.  His conduct is invariably resolute but there is a kind of statesmanlike formality about his actions.  He is respectful towards ritual, formal observances and Brahmans while in comparison with his encounters with the cowgirls his relations with women have an air of slightly stagnant luxury.  His wives and consorts lavish on him their devotion but the very fact that they are married removes the romantic element from their relationship.

Such vital differences are only partially resolved in the Bhagavata Purana.  Representing as they do two different conceptions of Krishna’s character, it is inevitable that the resulting account should be slightly biased in one direction or the other.  The Bhagavata Purana records both phases in careful detail blending them into a single organic whole.  But there can be little doubt that its Brahman authors were in the main more favourably inclined towards the hero prince than towards the cowherd