On Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 4, more than 1.2 bil­lion Hin­dus world­wide will cel­e­brate the fes­ti­val “Kr­ish­na Janam Asht­mi,” al­so known as Asht­mi Rohni, Shree Jayan­ti Kr­ish­nash­ta­mi and Goku­lash­ta­mi, with great zeal and fer­vour.

The word ‘Janam’ means birth, while Ash­ta­mi means the num­ber eight.

Kr­ish­na is wor­shipped as the eighth man­i­fes­ta­tion of Bha­gawan Vish­nu (the God of preser­va­tion, along­side Brah­ma the Cre­ator and Shi­va the De­stroy­er, to­geth­er known as the Trimur­ti Trin­i­ty).

Vish­nu, the pre­serv­er and the pro­tec­tor, fights evil of­ten, mak­ing ap­pear­ances in dif­fer­ent forms (Avatars).

Kr­ish­na is known as the God of pro­tec­tion, sym­pa­thy, ten­der­ness, joy and love.

The num­ber 8 is close­ly linked to Lord Kr­ish­na, ap­pear­ing fre­quent­ly, sym­bol­is­ing in­fin­i­ty. It is not by co­in­ci­dence that Kr­ish­na was the eighth child of De­vi­ka and Va­sude­va, born on the eighth day of Kr­ish­na Prak­sha.

There are many sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the lives of Kr­ish­na and Je­sus Christ. Lord Kr­ish­na was born ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,200 years be­fore Je­sus.

In the in­tro­duc­tion of his book, Je­sus Lived in In­dia, Hol­ger Ker­sten (born 1951), a Ger­man re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tor who trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly in In­dia dur­ing his re­search, writes: “Je­sus was sup­pos­ed­ly in In­dia dur­ing the age 12-30 study­ing Hin­duism and Bud­dhism. When the most cen­tral and fun­da­men­tal teach­ings of a church are no longer ac­cept­ed as the pure truth even among the church­es’ elite and ad­min­is­tra­tors, the end of tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty is un­de­ni­ably at hand. The mes­sage of the emp­ty pews is quite clear.”

In de­tail­ing Je­sus’ jour­ney through In­dia, Hol­ger draws many par­al­lels be­tween the life and teach­ings of Je­sus and the Hin­du Lord Kr­ish­na. Hol­ger writes:

“Al­most every­thing that has ever been said about Je­sus has par­al­lels in an­cient In­di­an leg­ends. Wide­spread ig­no­rance of the sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the In­di­an and Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion can part­ly be at­trib­uted to the in­abil­i­ty of al­most all Eu­ro­peans to read the San­skrit an­cient texts; not un­til re­cent­ly have trans­la­tions be­gun to arouse in­ter­est in the West­ern world.

“Lord Kr­ish­na and Je­sus Christ share many strik­ing nar­ra­tives and the­mat­ic par­al­lels in their birth, ear­ly life, threats by wicked rulers and spir­i­tu­al mis­sions of love.

• Kr­ish­na was born in a prison cell in Mathu­ra where his par­ents were cap­tives.

King Kam­sa sought to kill Kr­ish­na af­ter be­ing told by the Sage Nara­da that in his past life as the de­mon Kalane­mi, he was killed by Lord Kr­ish­na.

• Je­sus was born in a manger in Beth­le­hem; he was hunt­ed by the ruth­less King Herod out of fear that the new­born, re­ferred to as “King of the Jews,” would over­throw him, and many in­no­cent in­fants were slaugh­tered.

• Both were raised un­der pro­tec­tive care of adop­tive par­ents/guardians; Kr­ish­na by Nan­da and Yasho­da, Je­sus by Joseph and Mary who served as par­ents.

• Kr­ish­na was known as a “Cowherd,” one who tends to cows, Je­sus as the “Good Shep­herd,” car­ing for sheep.

• Both ap­peared at a crit­i­cal time when their re­spec­tive coun­tries were in a tor­rid state.

• Both died of wounds caused by sharp, point­ed pierc­ing ob­jects: Kr­ish­na by an ar­row, Je­sus by nails.

“There have been many ac­counts of Kr­ish­na’s youth, po­et­ry glo­ri­fy­ing his pow­er and qual­i­ties. Kr­ish­na was able to per­form all man­ners of mir­a­cles as a child. He thus sur­vived many dan­gers pre­pared for him by his un­cle Kam­sa. At one point, a snake crawled in­to his crib to stran­gle the child, but was killed by the lad with his bare hands (cf. the myth of young Her­cules). The hero­ic deed of the In­di­an child won­der would fill en­tire vol­umes.

“When he was six­teen, Kr­ish­na left his moth­er to spread his new teach­ing through­out In­dia. He spoke out against the cor­rup­tion of the peo­ple and the princes and said that he had come to earth to of­fer all peo­ple re­demp­tion from orig­i­nal sin, to dri­ve out un­clean spir­its, and to re­store the king­dom of good. He over­came mon­strous dif­fi­cul­ties, fought en­tire armies by him­self, per­formed man­i­fold mir­a­cles, awak­ened the dead, healed lep­ers, and gave sight to the blind and hear­ing to the deaf.

“Kr­ish­na sim­ply de­sired to re­new the re­li­gion that al­ready ex­ist­ed and cleanse it of all its odi­ous abus­es and im­pu­ri­ties. His teach­ings are in the form of po­et­ic para­bles and apho­risms. The ac­counts and dis­cours­es have been record­ed in the Bha­gavad-Gi­ta.”

The Hin­dus of Trinidad, un­der the guid­ance of their pun­dits, have in­stalled im­ages (mur­tees) of Lord Kr­ish­na in their tem­ples, their homes and their hearts. To­geth­er with the in­car­nat­ed Lord Ra­ma, Lord Kr­ish­na is wor­shipped and revered. In fact, the “Ba­by Kr­ish­na is dear­er to the Hin­du woman be­cause it arous­es the ma­ter­nal in­stincts in our ladies.”