Krishna is the eight incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who is one of three chief Hindu gods. He took birth on Earth to destroy evils, especially his cruel uncle Kansa.
He grew up with his foster parents in Vrindavana, where he killed demons his uncle sent to kill him, and where he saved its inhabitants from a severe storm by uplifting the Govardhana hill effortlessly. The storm was sent by Indra, the king of gods.
He had a childhood friend and lover Radha. Both of them are depicted together in paintings and poems as great lovers and are also worshipped together. But he never married her.
When he became a young man, he returned to Mathura to take part in a fighting competition his uncle Kansa had organized. There he fulfilled the prophecy by killing his uncle with Sudarshana Chakra, a spinning, disc-shaped weapon that had 108 separate edges. He then freed his imprisoned parents and made Kansa’s father the king of Mathura again.
Krishna had 16,008 wives. Of them eight were his main wives who were collectively called Ashtabharya. He married the other 16,000 to save their honour after killing the demon Narakasura who had kidnapped them.
He helped both sides in the Kurukshetra War, the war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas that went on for 18 days. The Kauravas had his army called Narayeni Sena and the Pandavas had Krishna himself. However it was on the condition that he would not use any weapon personally. The Pandavas won the war and the major credit in their win goes to Krishna.
The Kurukshetra War resulted in the death of all the 100 sons of Gandhari-the Kauravas. When Krishna visited her to offer his condolences, she cursed in rage that he would die after 36 years. So after the said time had passed, a hunter named Jara killed him in the forest. He had mistaken Krishna’s foot for that of a deer. And it is believed that Jara in his previous birth was the monkey king Vali who was slain by Rama. Rama was the seventh incarnation of Lord Vishnu.
