Bhagavatam · The Slaying of Narakasura

Parikshit sat a long while in silence. Then he raised his head. “Bhagavan, yesterday you spoke of the killing of Kamsa. That a wicked man met his end, this I can follow. But a thorn is caught in my mind. When a tyrant is struck down, what becomes of those he had trampled? Who joins together their broken lives? I have six days, Munivar, and I want to know this.”

Shukadeva was quiet a few moments. Then he said, “Rajan, Shri Hari comes to gather up the broken and make them whole. Striking down a tyrant is only the door he enters by. Listen, there is a katha of Pragjyotishapura, where sixteen thousand one hundred broken lives were made whole again in a single day.”

Bhaumasura, whom men also call Narakasura, was the son of Bhumi, a daitya born from the womb of the earth. His strength was such that even the devas could not meet his eye.

He had wrenched the parasol from Varuna, he had stripped the shining earrings from the ears of Mother Aditi, and he had carried off the jewel-crowned crest of Mount Mandara itself, the summit of the mountain of the gods that men call Maniparvata. And he had done a thing that no one before him had dared, he had taken by force the daughters of many kings and held them prisoner.

From every kingdom he had carried them off, from every direction. He had shut them away in a locked chamber within his palace, meaning to keep them all under his power.

Those princesses wept day and night. Far from their own cities, far from their mothers’ laps, inside the walls of a daitya. As the night deepened, one girl’s sob would wake another, and by the coming of dawn all would fall silent again, as if even the tears had run out.

When the cry of the devas grew very loud, Indra himself came to Dwarka and laid before Shri Hari every last deed of Bhaumasura.

Krishna and Satyabhama mounted Garuda and set off toward Pragjyotishapura. Long before this, to win the Earth’s own consent, Shri Hari had given her his word that her son’s life would never be taken except with her assent, and Satyabhama, who rode now at his side, carried in her something of that same Mother Earth. So the mother would be present, in a manner known to no one, when her son fell.

To enter Pragjyotishapura was a thing of great difficulty.

First there was a rampart of mountains ringing it about, then a barrier of weapons, then a deep moat full of water, then walls of fire and of wind, and within all of these the strong net of noose-ropes that the daitya Mura had laid. At every gate stood a guard of daityas.

Shri Krishna broke the mountains apart with the blow of his mace and cut the ranks of weapons to pieces with his arrows. Then with his chakra he tore down the walls of fire, water, and wind, and he cut Mura’s net of nooses apart with his sword. The great engines set along the ramparts, and the hearts of the warriors who manned them, he split with the blast of his conch, and he brought the fortress wall of the city to ruin with his heavy mace.

The sound of Bhagavan’s Panchajanya conch rang out like the crack of thunder at the dissolution of the world.

That roar broke the sleep of the daitya Mura, who until now had lain sleeping within the water of the moat. Five-headed, carrying a fierce splendor like the sun and fire of the day of pralaya, he came out, so terrible that it was not easy even to lift one’s eyes toward him.

He raised his trident and rushed at Shri Hari the way a serpent falls upon Garuda. It seemed as though he would swallow the three worlds with his five mouths.

He whirled the trident and hurled it with great force, and roared a lion’s roar from all five mouths, a sound that spread through earth, sky, patala, and the ten directions and filled the whole brahmanda.

Shri Krishna swiftly loosed two arrows that cut the trident into three pieces. At the same time he struck many arrows into Mura’s mouths. Then, filled with rage, Mura swung his mace, but Shri Hari, with the blow of his own mace, ground that mace to a thousand splinters in midair.

Weaponless now, the daitya spread his arms wide and lunged at Shri Krishna, and Bhagavan, as though at play, took off his five heads with the chakra. The heads cut away, the life fled out of Mura, and he dropped into the water the way a mountain, its peak sheared off by Indra’s vajra, falls into the sea.

Mura had seven sons: Tamra, Antariksha, Shravana, Vibhavasu, Vasu, Nabhasvan, and Aruna. Stricken with grief at their father’s death and burning to avenge him, they armed themselves for battle. Putting the commander named Pitha at their head, at the order of Bhaumasura they came up against Shri Krishna.

In great fury they began to rain down on Bhagavan a storm of fierce weapons, arrows and swords and maces and spears and lances and tridents. But the power of Bhagavan is unfailing and without end. With his arrows he cut their whole armory to pieces as small as sesame seeds. Then he cut away the heads, thighs, arms, feet, and armor of the commander Pitha and the daityas with him, and sent them all to the house of Yama.

When Bhaumasura saw that his army and his commander had all passed into the jaws of Kala, an unbearable rage took hold of him. He came out of the city with an army of rutting elephants born in the line of Airavata. He saw that Shri Krishna was seated on Garuda in the sky with his wife, as beautiful as a dark cloud of the rains beside its lightning, standing bright above the sun.

Bhaumasura loosed the weapon called Shataghni, which could bring even the vajra to nothing, and all his soldiers together let fly their own weapons as well. But each and every weapon that came, Shri Krishna cut down with three keen arrows apiece. In that same moment the arms, thighs, necks, and torsos of Bhaumasura’s soldiers began to fall away cut through, and the elephants and horses began to die. Garuda struck at the war-elephants with his wings, his beak, and his talons until the survivors turned in their distress and fled back into the city.

Now Bhaumasura fought on alone. He struck Garuda with the same Shataghni that had once turned back the very thunderbolt of Indra, but Garuda, though pierced by it, did not stir any more than an elephant stirs when a flower garland is tossed against it. Then Bhaumasura raised a trident to kill Shri Krishna, but before he could even let it go, Bhagavan, with his chakra of an edge keen as a razor, cut off Bhaumasura’s head while the demon still sat upon his elephant.

His shining head, with its earrings and its beautiful crown, fell to the earth. Seeing this, the seers cried out, “Well done, well done,” and the devas rained flowers upon Bhagavan and began to sing his praises.

Then the mother of the daitya, Bhumi, came forward. She placed around Shri Krishna’s neck the vanamala along with the Vaijayanti garland, and she gave back to Bhagavan the shining earrings of Mother Aditi, made of refined gold and set with gems, and along with them the parasol of Varuna and the great jewel-crest of Mount Mandara, the Maniparvata. Then, bowing low with folded hands and a heart full of devotion, she begged safety for her frightened grandson Bhagadatta, Naraka’s son, and Shri Hari laid his hand upon the boy, granted him fearlessness, and left him his father’s kingdom. The enmity came to an end, and that enmity too had been a kind of call, one that reached Shri Hari in the end.

After this Shri Krishna entered the palace, filled with all the treasures of Bhaumasura.

Going in, he saw that Bhaumasura had shut away sixteen thousand one hundred maidens, taken by force wherever his conquests had carried him. They were the daughters of kings, and of gods and Siddhas and daityas too, seized from their fathers’ houses and held here as captives.

When those princesses saw the best of men, Shri Krishna, entering the inner apartments, they were enchanted. Understanding it to be Bhagavan’s causeless grace and their own great fortune, in their hearts they chose him as their dearest and most beloved husband.

Each one of them resolved within her mind, “May this Shri Krishna be my husband, and may the Creator bring this longing of mine to pass.” In this way, with love, they laid their hearts down as an offering before Bhagavan.

Then Shri Krishna had those princesses bathed and dressed in fine, spotless garments and ornaments, seated them in closed palanquins, and sent them to Dwarka. Along with them he sent great stores of treasure, chariots, horses, and boundless wealth, and he sent on to Dwarka as well sixty-four swift white elephants with four tusks each, born in the line of Airavata, the elephant of Indra.

Then Shri Krishna went to Amaravati, to the palace of Indra, king of the devas. There Indra, with Indrani, did worship to him and to Satyabhama, and Bhagavan restored to Aditi, mother of the gods, the earrings that Naraka had torn from her. As he was leaving, at the urging of Satyabhama, he pulled up the wish-granting Parijata tree, root and all, and set it upon Garuda. Indra and the devas came after him to keep it, and Shri Krishna defeated them and bore the tree home to Dwarka. This Parijata he planted in the garden of Satyabhama’s palace, and its fragrance drew the bees after it the whole way, and the beauty of that garden grew very great.

The sixteen thousand one hundred princesses who had been held captive were now queens in Dwarka, and Bhagavan, in a single muhurta, taking a separate form in each separate mansion, wedded them all at once by the rite the shastras prescribe. He knew that these women had set their whole heart upon his feet, and for the all-powerful, imperishable Bhagavan, whole and lacking nothing, what is there in this to wonder at?

Each queen’s separate palace was filled with divine things that had no equal anywhere in the world. And in every one of them, at every hour, absorbed in the bliss of his own atman, was her own Shri Krishna, as though there were no other queen in all the world. Though a hundred servant-maids stood ready in each house, the queen herself would go to meet him at her door, seat him and wash his feet and wait on him with her own hands, and her joy at each fresh meeting only deepened, never once wearing thin. So the imperishable Lord, whose ways even Brahma cannot fathom, moved among these portions of Lakshmi exactly as an ordinary householder moves among his own, keeping every duty of the home.