Bhagavatam · The Slaying of Kamsa

That morning the Ganga’s water carried a stillness in it. Parikshit turned to the muni and said, “Bhagavan, yesterday you spoke of that Akrura who saw Shri Hari’s footprints even in the dust of the chariot road. But one thing has lodged in me. Kamsa lay awake for years waiting for these two. In fear of them he dashed six of his sister’s newborns against stone. How did his end come? Did he too find some destination, or was he cut down like any rakshasa?”

Shukadeva smiled. His voice was low and deep. “Rajan, a man who remembered Shri Hari his whole life, even through hatred, still remembered him. Listen, then, to the hour in which Kamsa’s end arrived.”

Akrura’s chariot came to a halt at the edge of Mathura as the day was declining. Nanda and the cowherds had taken a shorter road and were already waiting in a garden near the city. Akrura begged that the Lord would first grace his own house. Krishna clasped the bent, reverent man by the hand and said, laughing, that Akrura should go on into the city with the chariot and return home; the two of them would rest here a while and follow. When Akrura pleaded that he could not bear to enter without them, Krishna told him gently that he would come to his house only after Kamsa was dead. Akrura drove in heavy at heart.

The next afternoon Krishna and Balarama walked into Mathura for the first time, unafraid, the cowherds around them. They were seeing the city for the first time: high gateway towers of crystal, great doors of gold under golden arches, granaries of copper and brass, a moat, gardens and pleasure-parks, roads sprinkled with water and strewn with flowers and parched grain.

A rumor was already loose in the lanes. People came out onto rooftops and into the streets. “It is those two. From Gokul. The ones whose coming makes Kamsa tremble at the very word.”

Children, the old, the women, all of them stood with their eyes laid out like an offering, waiting for a look at that dark face. Some had run out with a jewel on one ear and none on the other, kohl painted around one eye, a meal left half-eaten, a baby left crying. And the women of Mathura said to one another, “What austerities did the cowherd women of Vraja perform, that they look on these two without pause?”

On the way they met a washerman, who also dyed Kamsa’s garments, a bundle of freshly washed and colored clothes in his hands. Krishna said, easily, “Brother, give us two sets from these, ones that will fit our bodies well. We have come from another country, and the highest blessing will be yours for the gift.”

The washerman wrinkled his nose. “Move along, cowherd boys. These are King Kamsa’s garments. Whoever begs the king’s property this way, the king’s men seize him, strip him, and put him to death. Walk on, if you want to live.”

Krishna severed the man’s head from his body with a flick of his fingertips. The dyed garments scattered in the dust, and his servants abandoned the bundles where they lay and ran in every direction.

Krishna and Balarama chose the clothes they liked and put them on, and much of the rest they handed out to their cowherd boys. Mathura saw for the first time how quickly the pride that had swaggered over this city could be brought down into the dirt.

A little farther on, a weaver saw them and was overcome by Krishna’s beauty. He dressed the two brothers in cloth of many colors, fitting each garment so well that they shone like a pair of young elephants decked for a festival, one dark and one white. Pleased, Krishna granted him wealth, strength, keen senses, and sarupya, a form like his own.

Farther on, the two brothers reached the house of Sudama, the maker of garlands. Sudama was overcome at the sight of them. He rose and laid his head at their feet, brought a seat and water for their feet, and hung garlands of fragrant flowers around their necks, saying their coming had made his birth fruitful and his whole line blessed. Pleased, Krishna granted him unshakable bhakti, goodwill toward all beings, and a prosperity that would grow in the hands of his children.

A little ahead stood a woman, a bowl of sandal paste and body-unguent in her hands. Her face was lovely, but her body bent in three places, which is why people called her Kubja, the crooked one. She saw that dark youth and for one moment her breath stopped.

“Who are you? I have never seen such a face till this day.”

“Sundari, whom is this unguent for? Give a little to us as well. Great good will come to you not long after this gift.”

She told them she was Kamsa’s servant, Trivakra by name, prized by the king for the sandal-paste she made, and that no one but these two deserved it. Then she lifted her thickest, most fragrant paste and smeared it on the limbs of both, and their bodies gleamed where the color met their skin.

Krishna pressed the front of her feet with his own feet, took her chin on the two raised fingers of his open hand, and lifted it just a little. A spine crooked for years came straight at that touch, and she stood a young woman rich in beauty and grace.

Her face burned with shyness and love. She caught the end of his upper garment. “Prabhu, come to my house. Once. I cannot let you go.”

Krishna glanced at Balarama and at the cowherds, and laughed. “When my work is finished, I will surely come. One task still remains.”

Ahead stood the sacrificial hall, where Kamsa’s bow-sacrifice, the dhanur-yajna, was to be held. High walls, soldiers at the gate.

In the middle lay a colossal bow like a rainbow, studded with jewels of every color, worshipped and heavily guarded. It was said that no one had so much as shifted it, let alone lifted it.

Krishna lifted it in his left hand as if in play, strung it, drew the string to its full, and broke it in two at the middle in the blink of an eye, the way an elephant in rut snaps a stalk of sugarcane.

The crack of that breaking roared until sky, earth, and the four directions were full of it. In the palace, the sound went into Kamsa’s chest like a thorn. The keepers of the bow rushed the two with their weapons drawn, “Seize him, bind him, he must not get away,” but with the halves of that same bow Krishna and Balarama laid them out where they stood, and the battalion Kamsa sent after them with them. They came out through the gate of the amphitheatre and, as the sun set, went back to their carts outside the city, where they washed their feet, ate rice cooked in milk, and passed the night at ease, knowing well what Kamsa meant to do the next day.

Kamsa found no sleep. In the mirror his reflection stood without a head. The stars and the lamps showed doubled. His shadow was full of holes. When he shut his ears, the old hum inside them was gone. The trees looked golden, and he left no footprints where he walked. In dream he rode a donkey southward, swallowed poison, wandered naked and alone under a garland of red flowers, his body smeared with oil, embraced by relatives long dead. Every sign spoke of death, and he lay awake in it.

The next morning, as the sun rose from the waters, the great festival of wrestling began. Kamsa’s men swept the arena, sprinkled it, and hung the galleries with flags and garlands and arches. The people of the city and the country filled the seats, Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and princes on their thrones. Kamsa took the royal dais among his lords with a sore aching heart. The wrestlers came in to the trumpets and the clap of their own arms: Chanura, Mushtika, Kuta, Shala, and Toshala, their limbs hard as the vajra. Nanda and the cowherds were given a dais of their own.

Kamsa had his utterly maddened elephant Kuvalayapida posted at the gate of the arena. The order to the driver was plain: before those two set foot inside, the elephant tramples them.

Krishna and Balarama reached the gate. Krishna tightened the cloth at his waist, tied up his curls, and called out to the driver in a voice deep as thunder to clear the way, or he would send man and elephant together to the house of Death. Stung, the driver goaded the beast, and it charged and caught Krishna up in its trunk.

Krishna slipped free of the coils, struck the beast, and vanished among its legs. Unable to find him, it hunted him out by scent and seized him again with the tip of its trunk, and again he tore loose. Then he caught it by the tail and dragged it a hundred cubits across the ground the way Garuda drags a cobra, spinning it about when it turned to reach him. He came around in front, struck it, feigned a fall, and when the rage-blinded elephant drove its tusks into the earth, he gripped its trunk, hurled it down, and trod on it like a lion on its kill. He wrenched out both tusks, and with them he finished the elephant and its drivers where they lay.

One tusk went to Krishna’s shoulder and one to Balarama’s, and smeared with drops of blood and ichor and sweat, just as they were, they walked into the arena. To the wrestlers, Krishna looked like a thunderbolt. To the men he was a jewel among men, to the young women love itself, to the cowherds one of their own, to the arrogant princes a chastiser, to Vasudeva and Devaki only a child, to the yogis the supreme Reality, and to Kamsa his own death walking in.

Inside the ring stood Kamsa’s wrestlers: Chanura, Mushtika, Kuta, Shala, and Toshala, mountains of men. On the other side, two slight boys not yet grown. The hearts of the onlookers rose into their mouths.

The women of Mathura gathered in knots and wept. “The king’s own councillors are doing a great wrong here, matching these tender boys against wrestlers hard as the vajra while the king sits and watches. Where adharma stands so plain, even to stay is a sin.”

Chanura stepped forward and threw down his challenge. “Krishna, darling of Nanda, and you, Balarama! The king has heard you are skilled and wishes to see it. Come, take us on.” Krishna answered in a calm voice, “We too are subjects of the king of the Bhojas, and should please him. But we are only boys, and will grapple with those who match us, so that no sin of an unequal fight falls on this assembly.” Chanura laughed. “You are no boys. Between you, you disposed of an elephant with the strength of a thousand elephants. Come, show your strength against me, and let Mushtika try his against Balarama.”

With a roar Chanura fell on Krishna.

They locked hand to hand and foot to foot, striking elbow against elbow, knee against knee, head against head. Under blows hard as lightning Chanura fainted and came back to himself again and again. At last he sprang like a hawk and drove both fists into Krishna’s chest, and Krishna did not move so much as a finger’s width, no more than an elephant struck with a flower garland. Then Krishna caught both his arms, whirled him through the air, and slammed him to the earth. The life had already gone out of Chanura in the whirling. He crashed down like a toppled banner of Indra, his ornaments scattered, his hair loose.

Mushtika had struck Balarama first with his fist; Balarama answered with one blow of his palm that shook him like a tree torn up in a storm, and he fell vomiting blood. Then Kuta by a blow of Balarama’s left fist, Shala by a kick of Krishna’s foot, and Toshala split into two: one after another they were laid to sleep in the dust of that same ring, and every wrestler still standing ran for his life.

All who watched rejoiced, every one of them but Kamsa. The two brothers took up their cowherd mates and moved through the arena to the trumpets, their anklets ringing.

On the high dais only Kamsa was left, clinging to his throne. His face turned to ash. All those years of stratagems, all those guards, all the fear he had wrapped around himself was crumbling in front of his own eyes. He shouted orders to his men: drive out these two sons of Vasudeva, seize the cowherds’ wealth, bind Nanda, kill Vasudeva, kill even my old father Ugrasena, who has sided with my enemy. But time had already slipped out of his hands.

Krishna reached the dais in a single leap. Kamsa rose and snatched up sword and shield to flee, and Shri Hari seized him the way Garuda seizes a snake as it darts left and right. Kamsa’s crown rolled off and fell.

He gripped him by the hair and dragged him down from the dais into the arena.

Kamsa crashed into the dust of the arena, and Krishna leapt down onto him. In that instant his life went out of him. Then Krishna dragged the dead body along the ground before the whole watching world, the way a lion drags an elephant, and a great cry of grief rose from all the people at once.

The face Kamsa had held in fear and hatred every hour of his life, the face he saw armed with the discus whether he ate or spoke, walked or lay down, even as he drew breath, was the very form he attained in dying. For years he had counted Shri Hari his enemy, and yet he never let him slip from mind for a single moment, and that unbroken remembrance carried him at the last into sarupya, a likeness of the Lord’s own form, rare even for the great ascetic yogis. Enmity too, when it grows so dense that nothing else remains in the mind, can become a door to release.

Kamsa’s eight younger brothers, Kanka, Nyagrodha, and the rest, burned to avenge him and sprang forward, but Balarama took up an iron beam and, like a lion among cattle, quieted them one by one. In the heavens kettledrums sounded; Brahma and Shiva and the gods rained down flowers, and the apsaras danced.

A long darkness lifted from Mathura’s head. The widows of Kamsa and his brothers came weeping into the arena, beating their heads, and fell upon their husbands. They mourned, and in their mourning they said aloud that this Krishna was the source and the end and the guardian of every living thing, and that no one who torments other creatures can ever come to rest. Krishna steadied them, gave them consolation, and had the last rites for the dead performed according to custom.

Then Krishna and Balarama went straight to the prison.

There sat Devaki and Vasudeva in chains, the very mother and father who had given them birth and whose laps they had never known.

So many years had gone by. The hair of both had whitened, the marks of fetters on their wrists, the exhaustion of long nights in their eyes.

Krishna undid their fetters with his own hands, and both brothers bowed and touched the feet of their parents.

“Ma. Pitaji.”

But even at their sons’ pranam, Devaki and Vasudeva, knowing them now for the Lords of the worlds, could not gather them to their hearts. How were they to think of these two as their own children? Vasudeva’s hands kept reaching toward their heads and stopping.

Krishna saw that they had grasped the truth too soon, before they could taste the plain joy of holding him as a son. So over that knowledge he drew a veil of his own maya. He came close, called them Mother and Father, and asked their forgiveness for all the years he could not serve them, held as they were under Kamsa’s hand. Then the hesitation loosened, and the two old people folded both their sons to their hearts and bathed them in tears and could not say a word.

Krishna brought Kamsa’s aged father Ugrasena out of the prison and set him once more on the throne of Mathura. He did not take the kingship himself. He stood among the Yadavas, a Yadava, and left the crown on the old man’s head.

He embraced Nanda too, honored him with garments and ornaments and gifts, and sent him back to Vraja with the promise that he would come once he had gladdened his kin here. And still, in Gokul, Nanda and Yashoda’s lap stayed empty. The boy whose footfall Yashoda’s ear had thirsted for all day long now belonged to a palace of stone.

The story did not stop there; much still lay ahead. But a long chapter closed that day, and after years, a fearless breath returned to the air of Mathura.