Krishna's enemies, the Buddhists

 With this in mind, I may hopefully be excused some specula-
tions on the figure of Jarāsaṃdha. As we have seen, the Harivaṃ śa
provides him with a new ally, Kālayavana, the ‘Black Greek’ or the
‘Greek of Time.’ Either name evokes opposition to Kṛṣṇa, who is of
course ‘black’ and frequently identified with Time. As we have seen,
‘like a peasant’ Kṛṣṇa ‘tirelessly keeps revolving the Wheel of Time,
the Wheel of the Universe, and the Wheel of the Yugas.’ The con-
notation ‘Greek of Time’ is all the more suggestive, because Kaṃsa,
another ally of Jarāsaṃdha, is said to be an incarnation of the asura
Kālanemi (1.55.9 critical apparatus; HV 1.54.64–65), a former vic-
tim of Viṣṇu who terrified the gods when he appeared ‘like Time’
(kālasannibham; HV 1.46.58), stepped forth with three strides remind-
ing them of Nārāyaṇa (idem, 59), and was finally dismembered by
Viṣṇu with his cakra.52 As Biardeau points out, Kālanemi is synony-
mous with Kālacakra, ‘Wheel of Time.’53 Now Jarāsaṃdha also has a
curious name and story. The name is composed of jarā ‘old age, Time,
decline,’ and sandha, which Biardeau takes in the sense of either ‘pact’
or ‘twilight’ (as in sandhyā).54 The straightforward etymology, how-
ever, which the Mahābhārata uses by introducing a personification
of jarā—the Rākṣasī Jarā, who unites Jarāsaṃdha’s two halves when
he is born split—is ‘put together by jarā,’ that is, ‘put together by old
age, Time, or decline.’ Now the Buddhist ‘wheel,’ the saṃ sāramaṇḍala
or bhāvacakra, is precisely ‘put together by old age and death.’ The
twelve nidānas are drawn into a circle that ‘puts these two together’
with ‘ignorance’: jarā-maraṇam, ‘old age and death,’ with avidyā. 

- Reading the Fifth Veda -- A study on Mahabharata, Alf Hiltebeitel