Richard H. Davis Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Bard College In several classical Sanskrit works, the god Krishna is presented as a human incarnation of the Supreme Being, Vishnu. Yet he grows up in humble circumstances within a community of nomadic cowherders. They are not appraised of the divinity living among them, and only gradually come to recognize his more-than-human capacities. The narratives of his early life play with the ironic distance between the knowing reader and the unknowing…