The skin gets the bluish tinge when that level rises to 10-20 per cent. Most of us have less than 1 per cent of methemoglobin. As the blood doesn’t get oxygenated, it makes the skin look blue, lips purple, and blood chocolate-coloured. He may have bewildered the non-devotees, but those who offered pure devotional service to Him had always seen Him in his blue blissful form.īut in real life, can people actually have that skin colour? While James Cameron, in his film Avatar, showed Na’vi having blue skin to imply otherness, there’s nothing alien about being born with a blue skin.īlue-tinged skin is the result of methemoglobinemia-a condition wherein hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that distribute oxygen to the body, is unable to release oxygen effectively to body tissues.
According to Bhagavad Gita, the blissful form of Lord Krishna is visible only to pure devotees. Some are of the opinion that the bluish tinge in Lord Krishna’s skin is not the colour of the material body but the eternal spiritual body of the Lord that emits blue aura. Since Lord Krishna is beyond our perception, it seemed apt to attribute this colour to him. According to Swami Chinmayananda, the inspiration behind Chinmaya Mission, whatever is immeasurable can appear to the mortal eye only as blue, just like the cloudless summer sky appears blue to the physical eye. Hindu religion believes in symbolisms and the blue color is a symbol of the infinite and the immeasurable. Then why is Lord Krishna universally depicted as someone with blue skin? Even in traditional p atta chitras (cloth art) in Odisha, Lord Krishna and Vishnu are always shown having black skin.
According to Vedas, Lord Krishna is a dark-skinned Dravidian god. At times, it is also translated as “all attractive”. The same theory is floated to explain blue throat ( neelkanth) of Lord Shiva, who is believed to have drunk the poison to save the world from destruction at the time of Samudra Manthan.Įtymologically speaking, the Sanskrit word ‘Krishna’ means black or dark.
The question as to why his skin looked different from ours must have nudged you? The legends tell us that Lord Krishna had drunk poisoned milk given by a demon when he was a baby and that had caused the bluish tinge in his skin. And in all these depictions, there’s one common link: the blue colour of his skin. The world has depicted Lord Krishna as a baby stealing butter and a charming youth holding a flute, with a peacock feather on his head.