Gopala-Krishna

[1] The narratives of Gopala Krishna are set in the cowherd settlement of the Vraja region called Gokulam, where he is raised by his foster-parents, Nanda and Yashoda.

The tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana, called the Krishna-charita, offers details regarding the childhood of Krishna as the foster-son of Nanda and Yashoda, his life of a cowherd in Vraja, his defeat of the malicious Putana and Kaliya, and his relationship with the women of the region.

[4] Indologist Wendy Doniger states that the Harivamsha, composed two centuries after the Mahabharata, integrates the mythologies of the powerful deity and prince who appears in the latter epic, with the folk and vernacular stories of Krishna as a cowherd child.

In this form, Krishna is represented as a divine cowherd, engaged in the playing of his flute, enrapturing the minds of the milkmaids of Vraja, called the gopis.

[9]In the Bhagavata Purana, Krishna is presented with his close friends who are also cowherds, called the gopas, who joke and have mock fights with the deity.

[11] While he tends to the cows and allows them to graze for pastures, he is attacked by a number of asuras, assigned with the task of slaying him by his tyrannical uncle, Kamsa.