Late Developments of the Harivaṃśa and the Prabhāvatī Episode

This chapter examines the Harivaṃśa’s appendices or late additions made roughly over the fifth- to twelfth-century CE period, particularly the elaboration of the Pradyumna-Śambara battle and the introduction of an altogether new and lengthy episode, the Prabhāvatī romance or slaying of Vajranābha, colored by the erotic-aesthetic vocabulary of śṛṅgāra. Here, the driving theme of Pradyumna’s mythic persona is reasserted, namely the audacious appropriation of a feminine figure ostensibly protected by an enemy male, whose violent defeat comes parceled with the emasculating discovery of his failure to protect her from the handsome boy’s virile magnetism. The chapter argues that the Prabhāvatī episode applies as never before the logic of the avatāra system, making of Pradyumna a charming actor upon a stage who, like his father Kṛṣṇa, assumes a temporary guise in a theatrical mode in order to destroy a demonic power threatening the gods and the cosmic order.