ndha, king
of Magadha. He had defeated him but as part of the peace terms had taken
two of his daughters as queens. These have now been widowed by his death
and repairing to their father's court, they rail bitterly against Krishna
and beg their father to avenge their husband's death. Jarasandha, although
a former rival of Kansa, is also a demon and can therefore summon to his
aid a number of demon allies. Great armies are accordingly mobilized.
Mathura is surrounded and the Yadavas are in dire peril. Krishna and
Balarama, however, are undismayed. They attack the foes single-handed and
by dint of their supernatural powers, utterly rout them. Jarasandha is
captured but released so that he may return to the attack and even more
demons may then be slaughtered. He returns in all seventeen times, is
vanquished on each occasion but returns once more. This time he is aided
by another demon, Kalayavana, and seeing the constant strain of such
attacks, Krishna decides to evacuate the Yadavas and settle them at a new
base. He commissions the divine architect, Visvakarma, to build a new city
in the sea. This is done in one night, the city is called Dwarka[35] and
there the Yadavas with all their goods are transported. When this has been
done, Krishna and Balarama trick the demons. They pretend to be utterly
defeated, retreat from Mathura and in despair ascend a tall hill. The
demon armies surround them and there appears to be no possible way of
escape. Jarasandha orders wood to be brought from the surrounding towns
and villages, piled up round the hill, saturated with oil and then set
fire to. A vast flame shoots up. The whole hill is ablaze but Krishna and
Balarama slip out unseen, take the road to Mathura and finally reach
Dwarka. When the hill is reduced to ashes, Jarasandha concludes that
Krishna and Balarama have perished. He advances to Mathura, occupies the
empty town, proclaims his authority and returns to Magadha.

[Footnote 35: Dwarka is sited on the western seaboard, 300 miles north-west
of Bombay.]

(ii) Marriages and Offspring

The immediate position, then, is that Krishna has abandoned his life among
the cowherds, has been accepted as a Yadava, has coped with the difficult
and dangerous situation arising from the tyrant king's death and finally
has saved the Yadavas from extinction by demons. This, however, has meant
the abandonment of Mathura and the movement of the Yadavas to a new city,
Dwarka. The same prob