Introduction
This chapter presents to the reader the initial and rudimentary facts about Kṛṣṇa’s son Pradyumna, and offers a hypothesis on why this figure of Hindu mythology has been so poorly studied. This requires a review of the relationship between the monograph’s two most important sources—the Sanskrit Mahābhārata and its appendix, the Harivaṃśa. Brief synopses of the seven individual body chapters are provided, followed by an articulation of the two dominant thematic patterns discovered by the study: (a) an evolving cooperation in the mythology of Pradyumna between three aspects of his character—as an erotic figure (lover), master of illusory subterfuges (magician), and double of his father Kṛṣṇa (scion of the avatāra); and (b) the social and gender commitments that conspired to produce a masculine ideal of a mutually implicating sexual and violent power, each embodied as a mode of the other in the persona of Pradyumna.