Bhagavatam · The End of the Yadava Line

That day Parikshit stayed silent a long while, his eyes fixed on Shukadeva’s face, like a man who wants to ask something and finds his tongue will not obey him.

”Bhagavan,” he said at last, ”you have told me the story of Uddhava’s leave-taking, and my heart is heavy. But one thing keeps me from sleep the whole night through. He at whose single gesture all creation moves, who killed Kamsa, who lifted Govardhana, who saved my own life in my mother’s womb, that Krishna watched the end of his own clan unfold before his eyes. Why did this happen? And how did he himself depart from this world?”

Shukadeva’s eyes lowered for a moment. Then he said softly, ”Rajan, whatever comes also goes, even that form of the Lord which we love. Yet there is a tenderness even in his going. Hear one thing before the rest, so it will not frighten you. The end of the Yadavas was Krishna’s own resolve, formed long before its hour. He had come to lighten the earth, and the great war had already drained away the burden of its kings. One weight was still left, his own people, whom prosperity had made proud and whom no enemy in the three worlds could bring down. He chose to withdraw them by their own hands, the way a stand of bamboo takes fire from its own rubbing and burns itself to ash, and then to return home to his abode in peace. The curse you are about to hear was the gate he opened. He saw it coming, he could have closed it with a single thought, and he let it stand, for the ending of that age was his own. Listen now, and do not be afraid.”

Uddhava had gone away to Badarikashrama. In Dwarka, Krishna was left almost alone now, only Balarama near him.

There is a story from long before, Rajan.

The Lord’s work in the world was all but finished. A company of the great sages had come to Dwarka, and one day he took his leave of them, Vishvamitra and Narada, Vasishtha and Durvasa and many more, and they went on to Pindaraka, a holy place near the city.

Some of the young men of the Yadava house followed the sages there, in high and idle spirits. A prank took hold of them. They dressed one of their own, Samba, Krishna’s son by Jambavati, as a woman far gone with child, and led him before the seers.

Clasping the sages’ feet with a great show of humility, they said, ”Seers of unfailing sight, this dark-eyed woman is near her time and longs for a son. She is too shy to ask you herself. Tell us, will she bear a boy or a girl?”

The faces of the sages darkened. Their voices stayed level, and under the level voices moved a slow fire.

”You have made sport of men of penance,” they said. ”So hear it. From this very belly an iron pestle will be born, and that pestle will wipe out your whole race.”

The laughter died on their mouths. With shaking hands they unwound the cloth from Samba’s belly.

Inside it lay a small pestle of iron.

Now fear stood where the laughter had been. They carried the thing home and brought it, with sick and colorless faces, into the court, and before all the assembled Yadavas they laid it in front of their king, Ugrasena, and told him what had happened.

Ugrasena had the pestle ground down to powder and cast into the sea, as though a curse could be dissolved in salt water. The last lump of iron, too hard to grind, he had thrown in after it.

A fish swallowed that lump. The fish was later taken in a fisherman’s net, and the sharp sliver cut from its belly came into the hands of a hunter, who fixed it to the tip of his arrow.

The Lord knew all of this from the first. He could have unmade the sages’ word with a single breath. He let it stand and gave it his blessing, for he was himself the ender of that age.

And so the curse settled down to wait, quietly, for years, for its hour.

Years passed. The Yadava line spread, into the thousands. There was strength, there was splendor, and along with them the pride that eats a house from the inside the way termites eat a beam.

Then one day Dwarka began to fill with omens. In the sky, on the earth, and in the air between, signs appeared that no one could read as anything but ruin. Krishna spoke to the Yadavas seated in the Sudharma hall: ”Noblest of Yadavas, these disturbances are the banners of our own destruction, plain as the standard of Yama, the lord of death. We must not stay here even an hour longer. Let the women, the children, and the aged go to the Shankhoddhara region, and let the rest of us set out for Prabhasa, where the Sarasvati runs west to meet the sea. There we will bathe and be made clean, keep a fast, worship the gods, and perform the rites of blessing, giving the brahmins cows and land, gold and cloth, elephants and horses, chariots and homes. Worship of the gods, of the brahmins, and of the cows is the surest way to turn misfortune aside and the best road to lasting peace.”

All the elder Yadavas took his word, and after crossing the sea by boat they went on to Prabhasa by chariot.

There, at Prabhasa, they performed the peace recitations and the rites of blessing with great reverence and devotion, exactly as Krishna had asked.

But their judgment had been marked for ruin, and they began to drink a strong liquor called Maireya, which fouls the mind at the root. One cup, then a second, and then the count was lost. Over the drink lay Krishna’s own maya as well, the enchantment by which he clouds a mind or clears it as he pleases.

In their drunkenness the old grudges woke. First the words turned hot, then hands were raised, then bows and arrows, swords and spears, maces and javelins. Pradyumna fell upon Samba, Akrura upon Bhoja, Aniruddha upon Satyaki, Gada upon Sumitra, Nishatha and Ulmuka upon each other, every pair fiercer than the last. The Dasharhas, Vrishnis, Andhakas, Bhojas, Satvatas, Madhus, Arbudas, Mathuras, Shurasenas, Kukuras, and Kuntis, people of every branch forgot their kinship and began to cut one another down. Sons struck at fathers, brothers at brothers, nephews at uncles, friend at friend.

At last, when their arrows were spent, their bows broken, and their weapons gone, they reached down and tore up a grass called eraka that had grown along the shore. This was the very grass sprung from the powder of the cursed pestle, which the sea had refused to keep and had carried back to the land.

The moment each blade came into a hand it turned into a club as hard as a thunderbolt. With these grass-clubs the Yadavas fell on one another again, and no one could hold his hand back, for the drink held them from without and the curse from within. Krishna and Balarama moved to check them, but the drink and the curse had so blinded the men that they took even the two brothers for enemies and rushed at them to kill. Provoked at last, Krishna and Balarama took up the eraka reeds themselves, and in their hands too the reeds became clubs, and they struck the maddened men down. So the clan that had once been the glory of Krishna’s court destroyed itself, possessed by the sages’ curse and clouded by the Lord’s own maya, the way a bamboo grove set alight by its own rubbing burns a whole forest to the ground.

When Krishna saw that every last Yadava had fallen, he drew a slow breath, knowing that the earth’s remaining burden too had been lifted.

Balarama watched all of it end. Then he went down to the sea’s edge, gathered his mind to a single point, and by yoga fixed his self in its own true nature. He gave up the human body and returned to what he had always been, the endless one, Sankarshana, whose realm lies deep beneath the world.

Now Krishna was alone.

When he saw that Balarama had merged into the supreme state, he walked to a peepal tree, set his back against its trunk, and sat quietly down upon the earth.

He wore now his radiant four-armed form, its own luster ablaze, a form that lit the four directions like a smokeless fire. His body was dark as a monsoon cloud, the Shrivatsa mark upon his breast, the silken yellow pitambara about him, a garland of forest flowers at his throat, the Kaustubha gem at his neck, and his weapons standing near in living form to serve him. He rested his left foot on his right thigh, the way a tired traveler settles to rest, and the sole of that foot shone red as a lotus.

Just then a hunter came into that forest, Jara by name.

Through the distant thicket he saw only that reddened sole, and it seemed to him the face of a deer.

He drew out his arrow, the very arrow to whose tip that sliver of iron had been fixed years before.

He took aim. The arrow flew.

And it struck Krishna in the foot.

Jara came running to gather his kill, and what he saw rooted his feet where he stood. Where he had aimed at a deer sat a four-armed man, dark-skinned and calm, blood flowing from his foot.

”Alas! What have I done?” The bow slipped from his hand. In terror he fell and laid his head at the Lord’s feet.

”O Madhusudana, I have done this in ignorance. All-pervading Lord, the great souls say that at the mere memory of you the darkness of a man’s ignorance breaks apart, and here I have brought harm to your very self. Kill me now, a wretch who hunts innocent deer, so that I may never again commit such a sin against great beings like you.”

But the one he had pierced sat calm. No pain touched his face. Only a deep peace rested there.

”Do not be afraid. Rise. In this you have done only what was already in my own mind. Go, and by my leave dwell in that heaven which the greatly virtuous attain.”

The veil before Jara’s eyes lifted, and he understood everything.

Receiving this command, he walked three times around the Lord, joined his palms, bowed his head, and boarding a heavenly car went off to the world above.

Meanwhile Krishna’s charioteer Daruka came searching for his master. Catching the scent of tulsi on the breeze, he guessed where the Lord might be, and walking on he came beneath that same peepal tree. Seeing Krishna seated there, ringed by his weapons in their living form, his heart brimmed over. He leaped down from the chariot and fell at the Lord’s feet, his eyes full of tears.

”Lord, since I lost the sight of your lotus feet my eyes have gone dark, the way a traveler’s road goes dark when the moon sets at night. I cannot tell one direction from another, and there is no peace anywhere in my heart.”

As Daruka spoke, the chariot behind him rose from the earth, horses and Garuda banner and all, and lifted into the sky, and the Lord’s weapons rose after it. Daruka stood with his face turned upward, watching them go.

Then Krishna gave him this charge: ”Daruka, go to Dwarka, and tell them there of the Yadavas’ mutual destruction, of Balarama’s return to his own state, and of my own departure to my abode. Tell them they must no longer stay in Dwarka with their families, for once I am gone the sea will drown that city. Let each take his wealth and household, and our parents Devaki and Vasudeva, and go under Arjuna’s protection to Indraprastha. And you, Daruka, take refuge in the Bhagavata-dharma I have taught you. Stand firm in knowledge, look past all of this, know this whole scene for a work of my maya, and be at peace.”

Daruka circled him, placed his lotus feet upon his own head and bowed to him again and again, and with a heavy heart set out for Dwarka.

There beneath the peepal, Krishna gently closed his eyes.

Above him the sky filled. Brahma came, and Shiva with Parvati, and Indra with the gods, and the sages with the lords of creation, all of them crowding the heavens with their bright cars, raining down flowers, longing to see the Lord go home. Krishna turned a last look upon them, drew his mind into his own essence, and closed his lotus eyes. He rose then, body and all, to his own abode, the fire of yoga never touching that form which upholds the whole universe. Kettledrums sounded in the heavens, and flowers came down like rain, and with him went truth and steadfastness and fortune and glory, leaving the earth poorer than it knew.

The gods watched with all their eyes and could not catch the moment he entered his realm, the way the eye loses the lightning as it slips back into the cloud. He had ended his play the way a master brings to a close a play he himself has written and staged. He who had once carried his teacher’s dead son back from the house of death, who had drawn Parikshit alive from a scorched womb, who had sent his own killer bodily up into heaven, stood in no danger at all from a hunter’s arrow. He laid the body down because he chose to, to show the world how lightly those who are settled in the self may hold the body, and then he was gone.

The form in which Kanha had once played in Yashoda’s lap, the form that had bound all of Vraja with the sound of a flute, had taken its leave of this world.