Was he blue, green or black, and why? 

He was divine. He was smartest, wisest, most intelligent, most attractive, most magnetic, most virile and most handsome male of his times (one would say 'of all times'). Men, women and children of all ages fell in love with him the moment they glimpsed him. How come, all we see of him now is abnormal disproportionate eyes, protruding lips, abnormal misshaped countenance, and a skin colour that jumps anywhere from charcoal black to blue, green and brown?

None of Krishna's depictions do him faintest justice. None. Nor do his representations by various popular, otherwise handsome actors. Pictures of his face and body never look one cent as beautiful as he allegedly was.

Is it because no body can recreate his image as he was, or no body really knows what he really looked like, or have we all been interpreting his descriptions wrong?

Let's talk about his famous blue complexion.

His Mysterious Blue Complexion

He was blue skinned by birth and people called him Krishna, the dark one, or the blue one.

A point to be noted is, ancient Indians used words 'black' and 'blue' often interchangeably, as also by the Greeks who used Kuaneos (κυάνεος): A term used for deep, dark shades that bridged glossy dark blue, indigo, and black. Historically, this word referred to a dark-blue mineral, enamel, or Lapis Lazuli used for decoration in ancient times, and it is the direct root of the modern English word cyan and medical terms like cyanosis.

Interestingly, Kuaneos and cyanosis sound a lot like Krishna!

In Mahabharata and all other ancient scriptures black hair is often written down as blue hair, dark skin is written down as blue skin which tends to raise a confusion if Krishna's skin was really black as black or blue as blue.

Black as coal, or black Coffee? Or dark as dark chocolate or normal north Indian dark complexion which could be light or dark caramel brown? Or Blue as solid Turquoise blue, sky blue, lotus blue, sapphire blue, cobalt blue, peacock blue or lapis lazuli blue?

Can you define the complexion colour in the picture below? Perhaps you can. But ancient people with their limited vocabulary and limited reference objects, couldn't. So, did they grapple on closest fitting objects to describe his colour? That should account for different descriptions and different colours…!

Although he was widely refereed to as Shyam which means dark, and called Krishna which again means black or dark, we assume he was blue because other common descriptions fit blue colour more accurately than black.

Some even called him green. 

But that may be because some shades of blue appear green when they move down the light spectrum toward wavelengths of 490 to 520 nanometers, adding yellow undertones or green-dominant cyan mixing values. The primary transitional shades include cyan, turquoise, aqua, and teal.

A blue with a green tinge. Someone focussing on green tinge more would have easily described him green…!

Bheeshm referred to his skin colour as that of linseed flower. 

Linseed Flowers are typically pale blue which can under different light seem as purple, light blue or dark blue.

Popularly and most commonly, Krishna's complexion has been compared with thick rain clouds, blue diamond or sapphire, and blue lotus. 

But again, sapphires, blue diamonds, blue lotuses and rain clouds, all have varying shades of blue which can appear purple, blue, green, gray or black under different lighting conditions.

Could it mean Krishna's skin was, in essence a complex shade that appeared dark blue, light blue, purple, grey, green or black under different light depending on the time of the day, surrounding environment, sun's glare, reflection, contrast illusion, ambiance, his prevailing moods and conditions?

So, the reason he is called black might not be because he was 'black' black' but because he appeared darker than the other normal north Indian fair, light caramel or wheat complexioned people around him.

Here is Krishna's possible skin colour palette with 43 shades. Technically, his skin colour could be any or simultaneously many of these shades

If we look closely we'll find that all the the extreme left vertical section and the extreme right vertical section can easily overlap each other and common people would not know how to differentiate one colour from another. The section marked with red aligns more closely with Krishna's colours in accordance with all the descriptions.

A possible connection with Cultural Quirks

In India, people normally refer to fair skin as milky white, while dark complexion as black without meaning it to be as black as charcoal.

Means Krishna's skin was not really of one colour but a spectrum of related colours that appeared light or dark, blue, gray, green, purple or black (darker, not black) and people described him as they individually decoded his colour.

Why he can't have been raven black? 

If he were raven black or let's say even dark brown, he wouldn't be likened to blue lotus, blue diamond, sapphire, Linseed flower and gray rain clouds. Instead, he would then have been referred to as 'black as hair, black as eye-kohl, black as raven, black as moonless night, soot of a lamp or black as Bhanvara (carpenter bee).

Interpreting Shyam and Krishna as coal black because these words mean dark or black is like taking figurative speech literally.

An example of an idiom spoken figuratively is "break a leg," which means to wish someone good luck (such as before a performance) rather than asking them to break their leg and physically harm themselves

Bheeshma was a learned man. If he never erred in complex astronomical calculations, military tactics and ethics, it is hardly likely he would confuse his colours like an ordinary man and say 'His skin colour is like that of a linseed flower' when he could as easily have said 'His skin colour is like that of a moonless night, or a raven.'

In fact, the very fact that he chose to refer to linseed flowers indicate how very accurate and precise he was trying to be to describe Krishna's skin colour correctly! Like the others, he didn't say rain clouds, blue diamond or blue lotus knowing full well that these things displayed many different shades too. He wanted to give an accurate description!

Interestingly, his jet black curly hair were always described as a pack of Bhanvara/ carpenter bees, which evidently means people knew what was black and what wasn't and they weren't getting confused.

His large Black Eyes

He is famously said to have intensely beautiful, large, lotus petal shaped, black eyes that twinkled and danced and cast a magical spell irresistible for everyone, even animals and birds. Painters and artists do take artistic liberty and often depict his eyes a mile long stretching from nose to ear, but that's just that: artistic representation.

His eyes were not likely to be like those of a typical male but more likely to be somewhat resembling those of a female i.e. large, shapely, long lashed with marked arched brows instead of ordinary bushy masculine ones.

Unlike his skin colour where description frequently varies, there's absolutely no confusion regarding his eye and hair colour, head hair and presence of body and facial hair.

His Uniquely Graceful yet Powerful Androgynous Built

A common error while depicting Krishna's physical body is either he is shown muscular-plumpish-fleshy or a modern 21st century six-pack wielding macho muscle he-man type masculine. He was neither. 

Not sure why, but Vishnu, Krishna, Ram and Shiva are always described as having tall, slender but incredibly strong, gracefully supple, swaying body with absolute absence of facial hair, moustache, beard, chest and armpit hair although they sport long, curly head hair.

Their slim graceful form equaled that of females, yet they were masculine enough to have a gait like that of a lion, and were broad shouldered and broad chested.

Various actors who acted as Krishna in various films and serials sure did wonderful job but portraying Krishna's multi-faceted, dynamic, paradoxical personality, his razor-sharp genius mind, superior intelligence, quick wit and humour, along with a graceful, elegant, agile, androgynous beauty is an impossible task which right costume, right dialogue and physique alone could never accomplish.

Representing Krishna doesn't just mean sticking a peacock feather in one's hair, donning ancient vedic costume, a couple of gold jewellery and one has got him. 

One needs to also have the right kind of body and body language, attitude, face and facial expressions, especially an ever-present mysterious, amused, mischievous smile (something that only actor Nitish Bharadwaj had been able to do) and a sharp penetrating intelligent look in the eyes to carry off this role.

Intelligent people, cheerful people, powerful and authoritative people look, walk and talk differently. A middle aged, broad, normal, humble, insignificant kind of person will never make a convincing Krishna.

It is impossible to look, walk, talk, smile and laugh like Krishna which is why perfect or correct representation still eludes us.

Now AI can what artists, poets, painters and authors couldn't

Luckily, we have now AI. AI can bridge this gap and achieve for us what talented painters, artists, actors and film directors hitherto could not. 

These pictures show his right skin colour, and capture his mesmerising, spirited, gorgeous persona and his captivating beauty without compromising on his general physique, hight, slenderness, proportions, general appearance and back ground. His GIFs are particularly enchanting!!! 

Thanks to AI that could make him look at once smart and beautiful, witty and humorous with a face one might want to die for!

But this is probably only for Sanatan Dharma people and Krishna devotees. For people who have never heard of Krishna might feel terribly odd. Modern 21st century people aren't going to accept a blue skin man so easily as Vedic people did except explained by a face paint, body alteration therapy or genetic disorder.

That, or an alien, of course...!

But that's just my opinion. Thanks for reading.

Note: Feel free to use these images and it would be nice if you could attribute them to me.

Ratna Srivastava
R BLOGS
Thinker | Author | Philosopher
Writing about intelligence, psychology, society and human nature.

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