Pradyumna

Abstract This monograph provides the first full-scale English language study of Pradyumna, the son of the Hindu god Kṛṣṇa. Often represented as a young man in mid-adolescence, Pradyumna is both a handsome double of his demon-slaying father and the rebirth of Kāmadeva, the God of Love. Sanskrit epic, purāṇic, and kāvya narratives of the 300–1300 ce period celebrate Pradyumna’s sexual potency, mastery of illusory subterfuges, and military prowess in supporting the work of his avatāra father. These materials reflect chiefly the values of an evolving Brahminical and Vaiṣṇava tradition deeply invested in the imperatives of family, patriline, the violent but necessary defense of the social and cosmic order, and the celebration of beauty and desire as a means to the divine. As such, Pradyumna’s evolving narratives, almost completely unknown in existing studies of Hindu mythology, provide a point of access to the development of Krishna bhakti and Vaiṣṇava theism more broadly. However, Jain sources cast Pradyumna as an exemplary figure through whom a pointed rejection of these values can be articulated, even while sharing certain of their elementary premises. This book assembles these narratives, presents key Sanskrit materials in translation and summary form, and articulates the social, gender, and religious values encoded in them. Most importantly, the study argues that Pradyumna’s signature two-handed maneuver—the audacious appropriation of a feminine partner, effectuating and enabled by the emasculating destruction of her demonic male protector—communicates a persisting fantasy of male power, expressed in the language of mutually implicating sex and violence.