Paper short abstract:

This paper examines a number of abducted-male scenarios in the myths of the adult Krishna and his male relatives of the Vrishni clan. Here, forms of sexual aggression configure Krishna and his kin both as gods enacting a divine plan and as virile males establishing and defending a patriline.

Paper long abstract:

South Asia's most beloved tale revolves around an abducted female and the war fought to recover her. Sita's seizure, captivity and rescue in the Ramayana have proven to be an inexhaustible fount of inspiration for the arts of South Asia, not least on account of the social and sexual values at stake in its narrative. Less famous, however, is the image of the abducted and captive male. This paper examines a number of abducted-male scenarios which form a pattern in the myths of the adult Krishna and the male relatives of his Vrishni clan: his father Vasudeva, brothers Samkarshana and Gada, sons Pradyumna and Samba and grandson Aniruddha. All of these figures participate in a larger mythic framework of divine descent and incarnation which maps divine identities onto the heroes, all of them nonetheless taking birth within and defining a human vamsha or lineage on earth. In the Vrishni captive-male narratives of the Mahabharata and Harivamsha and their appendices, and subsequently retold in various Sanskrit Puranas and kavya works, a set of inversions of sexual aggression and "conquest" function to configure Krishna and his kin both as gods enacting a divine plan and as virile males establishing and defending a patriline. The "abducted male" motif thus partakes of a popular and powerful dynamic widely recognized in brahminical myth and storytelling, but is deployed, I argue, in a unique way by those seeking to define the divinity and humanity of Krishna and his Vrishni fellows.