Krishna attracts everyone, just as a magnet attracts iron. That characteristic of His is right there in His name itself, which means “the all-attractive one.” But more on the Sanskrit derivation later. First, the magnet analogy. Although I knew of this notion of “Krishna as magnet,” it was only recently that I discovered how deeply it is embedded in our Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition.

For years, Sanskritists with whom I had become close due to my editorial work with the Journal of Vaishnava Studies had apprised me of the more common meanings of Krishna’s name, some of which were a bit surprising. So I decided to look into the etymology of His name myself. Much of what I found supported the usual definitions conveyed by my Sanskritist friends: the word generally refers to a color, i.e., black or blue-black, which, of course, most devotees will take as an allusion to Krishna’s beautiful dark complexion. But in terms of its original Sanskrit root, krish, the word also means “to plow,” or “to pull in, to draw to oneself,” the latter of these obviously pointing to “attraction.”¹

But plowing? Is Krishna a farmer? In fact, He is a cowherd boy, and the root krish, from which we get words like akarshaka. karshana, and akarshana, always includes a sense of “pulling” into proximity, as one might pull a plow. According to the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary, krish thus refers to a “plowman,” or a “farmer” (krishi, as in agriculture). Interestingly, in krishna-lila the ultimate “plowman” is Krishna’s brother, Balarama, also known as Sankarshana (note the use of karshana in the latter part of His name), for He carries a plow in His Vrindavan pastimes.