http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/britishlibra...p;startid=14004
This is a link i found to a picture i found of Krishna-Kali. Does anyone know the story behind this and it's significance?
(Sorry i don't know how to add pictures directly on to this page)
As a joke, perhaps? I can't imagine any other explanation. Unless the picture is meant as pure fantasy.
As the painting is bengali, I imagine this is bleeding together of local religious ideas. Sometimes hinduism on the local level, or the village level is very unstructured in comparison to the scripturally based sampradaya presentations that we are familiar with. There is a lot of worship of shakti in Bengal, so perhaps this is a manifestation of the merging of religious sentiments. There is probably some obscure story behind the picture, but finding a source may prove it to be "unauthorized".
Bhrigu probably has a good take on this...
Well, not that good, but I know that there is a tradition in Bengal that merges these two conceptions of Godhead. Sanatana Goswami quotes a lenghty meditation from the Sammohana-tantra on Krishna as a form of Durga in his commentary to the HBV, and Jiva Goswami quotes several tantric verses to that effect in his commentary to Brahma-samhita 5.3. Of course, this identity is not an absolute identity, but intended to prove that Krishna and his energy (prakriti) are non-different.
Apart from this, the picture seems to portray a specific lila, one that I am ignorant of.
Obviously people in bengal see krsna as the manifestation of kali not the otherway round.
Obviously people in bengal see krsna as the manifestation of kali not the otherway round.
I wouldn't go that far.
The gopis did worship Katyayani, and if we take her as a sakti of Siva, then she would be the same as Kali (although technically I believe Kali is the sakti of an equally fierce form of Siva, Kalabhairava, riding a dog).
If it's not a village hindu interpolation, it could be some lila in which Krsna shows them he is the very goddess they are worshiping to have him as a husband, but would the use of that be for the sake of lila anyway?