The Hindu god Krishna converses with the Pandava brother Yudhishthira, from a manuscript of the Razmnama (a Persian translation of the Mahabharata)

Identifiable by his dark skin and saffron-colored robes, Krishna presides here over a council and converses with the hero Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandava brothers. As advisor to the Pandavas, heroes of the Mahabharata epic, Krishna demonstrates his great wisdom and knowledge. In the Mahabharata’s lengthy text—nearly ten times longer than Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined—which describes a bloody war between two groups of cousins, several core teachings of Hinduism are explained through Krishna’s dialogues with various characters in the story. The Pandavas seek Krishna’s advice on subjects like moral conduct, military strategy, and ethics in warfare. The deity’s responses function as guidelines underlying Hindu religious philosophy. The Bhagavata Gita, a fundamental text of Hinduism, is a conversation elsewhere in the Mahabharata between Krishna and the hero Arjuna.