"Heroic Krsna" is a portrait of a pre-Hindu and pre-classical figure of a superhuman hero who in time became the divinity Krsna, an incarnation of Visnu. This is a picture, drawn from the epic Mah bh rata, of an archaic warrior who excelled as a charioteer; in fact this is the best depiction that we presently possess in any epic "corpus" of a charioteer type. Krsna is also described in his role of moral instructor, as poet and ambassador, and in the office of dual kingship with the "dharmaraja" Yudhisthira. There is no other representation of a complex friendship in the poem apart from what...