Krishna is a Sanskrit term whose literal meaning black or dark and describes someone with a very dark skin. The Gaudiya tradition explains the primary meaning of the name Krishna as being "all-attractive. This is justified by an interpretation of a verse in the Mahabharata, as given in the Chaitanya Charitamrita. According to Adi Sankara`s, Krishna is the 57th name of Vishnu and means the "Existence of knowledge and Bliss."

The Mahabharata depicts Krishna as an incarnation of Vishnu who is the central character in many stories of the epic The Bhagavad Gita in the Mahabharata contains the advice of Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield.The Harivamsa an appendix to this epic contains the earliest detailed version of Krishna`s childhood and youth. The Mahabharata and the Harivamsa are considered sacred by Hindus. The life of Krishna is described in details from the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, the Bhagavata Purana and the Vishnu Purana. The scenes from the narrative are set in north India, mostly in the present states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Delhi and Gujarat .

Krishna`s birthday is celebrated as Janmasthami which is based on scriptural details and astrological calculations .Krishna took birth in the royal family of Mathura and was the eighth son born to princess Devaki and her husband Vasudeva . King Kamsa, Devaki`s brother, had ascended the throne by imprisoning his father, King Ugrasena. Afraid of a prophecy that predicted his death at the hands of Devaki`s eighth son, he had the couple cast into prison where he planned to kill all of Devaki`s children at birth. After killing the first six children, and Devaki`s apparent miscarriage of the seventh, Krishna took birth. As his life was in danger he was sent out to be raised by his foster parents Yasoda and Nanda in Gokul, Mahavana. Two of his siblings also survived, Balarama (Devaki`s seventh child, transferred to the womb of Rohini, Vasudeva`s first wife) and Subhadra (daughter of Vasudeva and Rohini born much later than Balarama and Krishna).

The place believed by worshippers to mark Krishna`s birth is now known as Krishnajanmabhoomi.

Nanda belonged to the community of cow herds and settled in Vrindavan. Kamsa learnt from sources that the child who would be responsible for his death had some how escaped and therefore he kept sending various demons to put an end to him The demons were defeated at the hands of Krishna and his brother Balarama. Some of the most popular exploits of Krishna center around these adventures, such as the lifting of Govardhan hill and his play with the gopis of the village, including Radha. The stories of his play with the gopis became known as the Rasa lila and were romanticised in the poetry of Jayadeva, author of the Gita Govinda.

Krishna as a young man returned to Mathura and overthrew and killed his uncle Kamsa and made Ugrasena as the king of the Yadavas In this period he became a friend of Arjuna and the other Pandava princes of the Kuru kingdom, on the other side of the Yamuna .He married Rukmini, daughter of King Bhishmaka of Vidarbha. In Vaishnava traditions, Krishna`s wives in Dwarka are believed to be expanded forms of the goddess Lakshmi.

In the Mahabharata Krishna was the cousin of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas He asked the sides to choose between his army and himself. The Kauravas picked the army and he sided with the Pandavas. He agreed to be the charioteer for Arjuna in the great battle. The Bhagavad Gita is the advice given to Arjuna by Krishna before the start of the battle.

In the Bhakti movement Krishna was the focus of attention and even with its end and is still an important and popular devotional and ecstatic aspects of Hindu religion, particularly among the Vaishnava sector

The Supreme Lord descends from time to time in this material world to re-establish the teachings of the Vedas. In His Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna promises: "Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion--at that time I descend Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I myself appear millennium after millennium."