Balaramaबलराम

Balarama is the elder brother of Krishna, a god of enormous strength whose emblem is the plough and whom tradition identifies as the embodiment of Ananta-Śeṣa, the cosmic serpent on whom Vishnu rests. In the avatar lists of several traditions, notably in the south, he stands as the ninth descent in place of the Buddha; elsewhere he is honoured as Krishna's inseparable complement, the fair brother beside the dark one. As Saṅkarṣaṇa he was among the earliest of the Vrishni heroes to receive cult, and his worship is attested on coins and inscriptions from the closing centuries before the common era, making him one of the oldest documented figures of the Vaishnava tradition.

The story

Conceived as the seventh child of Vasudeva and Devakī under Kaṃsa's death-sentence, he was transferred by divine contrivance to the womb of Rohiṇī, whence his name Saṅkarṣaṇa, the drawn-across; he thus grew up beside Krishna among the cowherds. His feats are feats of main strength and appetite: he slays the demon Dhenuka, wrestles down Kaṃsa's champion, and in a famous episode drags the Yamuna river to himself with his plough when she declines to come to him. A master of the mace, he trained both Bhīma and Duryodhana in its use, and when the Mahābhārata war divided his loyalties between pupils he refused to fight at all, departing on pilgrimage along the Sarasvatī while the armies met. Tradition notes his fondness for drink and his quick temper as frankly as his strength. At the end, seated by the sea, he gave up his body, and the serpent Śeṣa issued from his mouth to return to the ocean.

Worship

Balarama's iconography shows a fair-skinned, powerfully built figure bearing the plough and often the pestle or mace, sometimes canopied by serpent hoods that declare his identity with Śeṣa. His agricultural emblem made him a patron of farmers, and he has been linked with older serpent and fertility cults. His most conspicuous living worship is at Puri, where as Balabhadra he forms the temple triad with Jagannātha and their sister Subhadrā, riding his own chariot in the great annual festival. In Jain tradition a parallel figure, the Baladeva, recurs across the cycles of universal history, a mark of how widely this elder brother once ranged.