Satrajit was a Yadava of the Vrishni line, Nighna’s son, and Prasena was his brother; and the Sun, Bhagavan Aditya, counted him a friend. One day Satrajit sat on the seashore and praised him, and the praise took his whole mind with it, so that Bhagavan Bhaskara came down out of the sky and stood before him. What stood there had no edges. Satrajit looked into it and saw what he had always seen, and he said so: “In the sky I have seen you as a ball of fire, and now that you have come down to me I see you exactly the same. I can find nothing in this that is the fruit of your grace.” At these words the Sun lifted from his own neck the great jewel called Syamantaka and set it to one side, and the glare went with it. Satrajit saw his friend for the first time: a body faintly copper in color, brilliant and small, the eyes touched with a tawny light. He bowed and praised him again, and the thousand-rayed god said, “Ask for what you desire.” Satrajit asked for the one thing the Sun had just taken off. Bhagavan Surya gave him the Syamantaka and went back to his place in the sky.
He walked home into Dwarka with the spotless jewel at his throat, and its light ran ahead of him down every street, so that the city stood in a second sunrise. The people went to Bhagavan Purushottama, the first of all persons, who had come down in human form by a portion of himself to lift the burden off the earth, and they bowed and said, “Surely this is Bhagavan Suryadeva himself, coming for your darshan.” The Lord answered them, “This is Satrajit, wearing the great jewel Syamantaka that Bhagavan Surya has given him. Look at him now without fear.” So they looked, and Satrajit carried the jewel into his house and kept it there. Every day it yielded eight bharas of gold, and while it lived in the kingdom the kingdom lived free of disease, drought, serpents, fire, thieves, and famine. It came into Achyuta’s mind that a jewel of that order belonged with King Ugrasena, and he had the strength to take it the hour he chose; the thought of the clan splitting into factions over it held his hand. Satrajit learned only this much, that the Lord meant to ask him for the jewel. He closed his hand around it, and out of greed he passed it to his brother Prasena.
A Charge of Theft Falls on Krishna
Prasena knew one thing about the Syamantaka, that it was his now. He did not know the rest: that the gold and every other virtue flow from it only for the man who wears it in purity, and that on a man who wears it unclean it turns and kills. He tied it at his neck, mounted his horse, and rode out to the forest to hunt. A lion killed him there, and killed the horse under him, and was moving off with the spotless jewel held in its mouth when Jambavan, the king of the bears, saw the light going through the trees and killed the lion. Jambavan carried the jewel home to his cave and handed it to his small son Sukumara for a toy.
Prasena did not come back. In Dwarka a whisper began among the Yadavas and went from ear to ear until it was the only thing being said: Krishna wanted that jewel, so Krishna had taken it; whose doing could it be but his? The slander reached him in the open, and he answered it with the whole Yadava army at his back, riding out along the hoofprints of Prasena’s horse. The prints led into the forest and ended where a lion had killed the man together with his mount. Every Yadava present could read the lion’s tracks in the earth, and from that moment his name was clean. He went on anyway, following the lion, because of what the jewel was. A little further the trail gave him the lion itself, dead, killed by the king of the bears, and after that the bear’s own prints, which he followed to the mouth of a cave. There he left the army at the foot of the mountain and went in alone.
Twenty-One Days in Jambavan’s Cave
Inside, out of the dark, a woman’s voice was singing a child quiet, and the song was a confession. “The lion killed Prasena, and Jambavan killed the lion. Do not cry, Sukumara. This Syamantaka jewel is yours.” A lullaby had handed him the whole case. He followed the voice in and saw the jewel itself, a child’s toy now, blazing in the nurse’s hand. She looked up and found a stranger of no ordinary make standing in the cave with his eyes fixed on the stone, and she screamed, “Trahi, trahi!” Jambavan heard the fright in it and came in with his anger already lit, and the anger on both sides climbed as they fought, until the fight had lasted twenty-one days.
At the foot of the mountain the Yadava soldiers watched the cave mouth for seven days, then eight, and no one came out. They reasoned their way to the worst. “Madhusudana has surely died in that cave. Alive, why would he need so many days to finish one enemy?” They went home and told Dwarka that Shri Krishna had been killed, and his kinsmen performed every rite that is owed to the dead. Inside the mountain the fight went on, and the food and water they offered him in their grief, with such deep faith and in the special vessels the rite prescribes, reached him there and fed his strength and his life while he fought. Jambavan had no such supply. He took nothing at all, and under the blows of that immense person his body ached from end to end and his strength drained out of him by the day. Beaten at last, he bowed and spoke. “Devas, asuras, gandharvas, yakshas, rakshasas, none of them can conquer you. What then of men, with their small valor and their short lives on earth, or of creatures like us, born in animal wombs and made in a man’s likeness? Surely you have come from a portion of Bhagavan Narayana, who sustains all the worlds, as our lord Shri Ramachandra came.” Then the Lord told him the whole account of his descent to lift the burden from the earth, and laid a hand on him with love, and the exhaustion of twenty-one days went out of the bear under that touch. Jambavan bowed again and set himself to please his guest, and he gave what a host gives to a guest who has come to his house: as arghya, his daughter Jambavati, and with her, bowing, the Syamantaka. From a man brought that low nothing should have been taken. Achyuta took the jewel for one reason, to wash the stain from his own name, and he went back to Dwarka with Jambavati.
Satyabhama’s Marriage and Shatadhanva’s Conspiracy
His return turned Dwarka over. Joy ran through the people so fast that men of great age felt a new youth enter them the moment they saw his face, and the whole Yadava host and their women came out crying, “Aho bhagya! Aho bhagya!” Before the assembled Yadavas he told the whole of it, event by event, exactly as it had happened. Then he placed the Syamantaka in Satrajit’s hands, and with that the false stain was off him, and he sent Jambavati into his inner apartments. Satrajit stood in the hall with one thought: I put a false charge on Krishnachandra. Fear did the rest. He gave the Lord his daughter Satyabhama as wife. Akrura, Kritavarma, Shatadhanva, and other Yadavas had all asked for that girl before him, and when she went to Shri Krishna each of them took it as an insult aimed at himself and turned on Satrajit. Akrura, Kritavarma, and the rest went to Shatadhanva and worked on him. “This Satrajit is a wicked man. Look at what he has done: we asked for her, and you asked for her, and he counted us as nothing and gave his daughter to Krishnachandra. What use is his life now? Kill him and take the great jewel Syamantaka. If Achyuta moves against you afterward, in any way at all, we will stand with you.” Shatadhanva said, “Very well. It will be done.”
At that same time word came that the Pandavas had burned to death in the house of lac. The Lord knew the truth of what had happened at Varanavata, and he went there all the same, to perform the rites a family owes its dead and to let Duryodhana’s effort go slack in his hands. The moment he was out of the city, Shatadhanva came to Satrajit in his sleep, killed him, and took the jewel. Satyabhama did not stop to mourn. With her father’s murder burning in her she mounted a chariot that same hour, drove to Varanavata, and stood before Bhagavan Krishna. “My father gave me into your hands. Shatadhanva could not bear it, so he has killed my father and carried off the Syamantaka, whose light would empty all three worlds of their darkness. The mockery in this is aimed at you. Weigh all of it, and do what is fitting.” Within himself the Lord was pleased with her; his eyes went red with anger. “Satya, the mockery is mine, and I will not carry that wicked man’s deed. When a man cannot get past a tall tree, he does not go killing the birds that nest and live in it. You need say nothing more to me out of grief.” He left Varanavata, came to Dwarka, took Baladeva aside where no one could hear, and said, “A lion killed Prasena when he went hunting in the forest. Now Shatadhanva has killed Satrajit as well. With both of them dead, the Syamantaka belongs to the two of us by equal right. So rise, mount the chariot, and let us set about killing Shatadhanva.” Baladeva said, “Very well,” and rose.
Who Should Keep the Jewel
Shatadhanva learned that Krishna and Baladeva were coming for him, and went for help to the men who had promised it. Kritavarma gave him one sentence: “I am not able to stand against Baladeva and Vasudeva.” He went to Akrura, and Akrura gave him a catalogue. “One of them shakes the three worlds with a kick of his foot and widows the wives of the asuras, the enemies of the gods, and the strongest armies on earth have never once stopped his chakra. The other subdues everything he looks at with eyes the wine has reddened, and holds a plow of unbroken greatness that drags the war-elephants out of the enemy’s ranks. All the gods the worlds worship cannot fight those two together. What am I? Take refuge somewhere else.” Shatadhanva said, “Very well. If you count yourself wholly unable to protect me, then take this jewel from me, and protect it.” Akrura said, “I will take it on one condition: that you tell no one of this, not even at the hour of your death.” Shatadhanva said, “So be it,” and Akrura kept the Syamantaka.
Then Shatadhanva fled on a mare of terrible speed, a vadava who could run a hundred yojanas, and Baladeva and Vasudeva came after him in a chariot drawn by the four horses Shaibya, Sugriva, Meghapushpa, and Balahaka. The hundred yojanas ran out in the forest country of Mithila. He drove her on past them and she gave up her life under him there, and Shatadhanva left her where she fell and ran on foot. Shri Krishnachandra turned to Balabhadra. “Stay in the chariot. I will go on foot and kill this running wrongdoer. The horses have seen enough on this ground to frighten them, so do not drive them any further.” Baladeva said, “Very well,” and stayed with the chariot. The Lord pursued the man on foot for two kos, no more, and from that distance he let the chakra go and cut off Shatadhanva’s head. Then he searched the body and searched the clothes, every fold of them, and found no jewel. He went back to Balabhadra and said, “We killed Shatadhanva for nothing. The Syamantaka, the essence of the whole world, was not on him.”
Baladeva heard this and heard a story being invented to hide a jewel. His anger came out whole. “Shame on you. You are deep in greed for wealth, and I forgive you only because you are my brother. Your road is open; go happily wherever you please. I have no business now with Dwarka, or with you, or with any of our kin. Enough of these empty oaths in front of me.” He cut the talk short there, and however much Krishna pleaded he would not stay. He went to the city of Videha, where King Janaka came out to him with the arghya, led him into his own house, and kept him there; and Bhagavan Vasudeva went home to Dwarka. For as long as Baladeva lived under Janaka’s roof, Duryodhana, Dhritarashtra’s son, came and learned the fight with the mace from him. Three years passed before Babhru, Ugrasena, and the other Yadavas, who knew for certain that Krishna had never taken the Syamantaka, went to Videha, swore it to Baladeva on oath until he believed them, and brought him home.
All this while Akrura, his mind fixed in meditation on Bhagavan, kept the gold of that jewel going into the fire, one yajna running into the next with no gap between them; and there was a reason under the piety. To kill a kshatriya or a vaishya who stands consecrated for a yajna is brahmahatya, the killing of a Brahmin, and no one strikes such a man without taking that sin on himself; so Akrura wore the diksha of sacrifice as his armor and never took it off. For sixty-two years the jewel’s power kept Dwarka free of disease, famine, epidemic, and death. Then the Bhoja Yadavas of Akrura’s faction killed Shatrughna, the great-grandson of Satvata, and Akrura left Dwarka with them; and on the very day he went, disease, famine, serpents, drought, pestilence, and trouble of every kind rose in Dwarka together. Bhagavan Krishna sat down with Balabhadra, Ugrasena, and the other Yadus to take counsel. “What is the reason that so many troubles have come on us at once? This has to be thought through.” An old Yadava named Andhaka answered him. “Wherever Akrura’s father Shvaphalka lived, famine and epidemic and drought never came. Once the land of the king of Kashi lay in drought, and the hour Shvaphalka was brought into it, the rain began. At that time the queen of Kashi carried a daughter, a jewel of a girl, and the child would not be born. Her time came and passed and she stayed in the womb, and in that way twelve years went by. At last the king spoke to the daughter inside the womb. ‘Daughter, why are you not born? Come out. I want to see your face. Why do you torment this mother of yours for so many days?’ She answered him from inside. ‘Father, if you give a cow to a Brahmin every day, then after three more years I will surely come out.’ The king gave a Brahmin a cow every day, and when the three years had passed she was born. Her father named her Gandini, and when his benefactor Shvaphalka came to his house he gave her to him as the arghya. From her, by Shvaphalka, this Akrura was born. When a man is born of parents like those, how could famine and epidemic fail to come the moment he left? He must be brought back. The offense of a man of such virtue is a thing we should not look into too closely.”
Hearing Andhaka out, the Yadavas led by Krishna, Ugrasena, and Balabhadra set Akrura’s offense aside, sent him their assurance of safety, and brought him back to the city; and the hour he arrived, drought, epidemic, famine, the danger of snakes, every trouble, went still. Then Shri Krishnachandra sat with the facts. That Akrura was born of Gandini by Shvaphalka was an ordinary enough cause for a man. His power to calm drought and famine and plague was very great, and such a power had been heard of in exactly one thing in the world; it followed that the Syamantaka was with him. There was more. The man performed yajna after yajna, a second behind the first and a third behind the second, without a break, and his means were small. No one feeds a fire like that from an ordinary purse. The jewel was with Akrura, beyond doubt. So he gathered every Yadava into his palace on the pretext of some other business, and when they had all come in and sat, he stated that business and finished it, and then, as if a joke had risen in the course of the talk, he turned to Akrura. “Akrura, we all know that Shatadhanva left the great jewel Syamantaka, the essence of the whole world, in your keeping. It does the whole kingdom good. Let it stay with you; all of us live on the fruit of its power. Only, Balabhadra here has had his doubts of us. So for our peace of mind, show it to us this once.” Having said it lightly, the Lord fell silent.
Akrura had the jewel on him at that moment, and he thought it through. If he said anything else, they had only to feel along the covering of his clothes and find it, and open quarrel with those two would do his house no good. So he spoke to Shri Narayana, the cause of the whole world. “Shatadhanva did entrust that jewel to me, and since his death I have kept it with the greatest difficulty, thinking every day that you would ask for it today, or tomorrow, or the day after. I have no attachment to pleasures of any kind, and even so the trouble of guarding it has left me without a trace of happiness. I did not tell you myself, because I thought you would judge me unable to bear even this small burden that does the kingdom good. Here is your Syamantaka. Give it to whomever you wish.” Then he drew out a small gold casket hidden in his waistcloth, opened it, took out the Syamantaka, and set it down in the middle of the Yadava assembly, and the whole hall caught fire with its light. “Shatadhanva gave me this jewel. Let whoever owns it take it.” From every side came the murmur of wonder, “Sadhu, sadhu.” Balabhadra looked at it with open desire: his right in it was equal to Achyuta’s. Satyabhama looked at it with open desire: it was her father’s property. Krishnachandra looked from his brother to his wife and saw himself as a creature caught between the ox and the wheel. Then, before all the Yadavas, he spoke to Akrura. “I had this jewel shown to these Yadavas to clear my own name. Balabhadra and I have equal right in it, and it is Satyabhama’s inheritance from her father, and no one else has any right in it at all. Worn always in purity, by a man with brahmacharya and the virtues that go with it, this jewel does the whole kingdom good; worn in impurity, it kills the very man who holds it. I have sixteen thousand wives, so I am not able to wear it. How, then, could Satyabhama wear it? And for its sake the noble Balabhadra would have to give up wine and every enjoyment. So these Yadavas, Balabhadra, Satyabhama, and I, all of us together, make one prayer to you: you alone are able to wear it. Worn by you it will do the whole kingdom good. For the welfare of the whole kingdom, wear it as you did before, and say nothing further in this matter.” Akrura said, “As you command,” and took up the great jewel. From that day he wore it openly at his neck, before everyone, and went about wrapped in a net of rays, like the Sun.
Whoever remembers this, how the Lord cleared the false stain from his name, is never touched by even a little false blame himself; all his senses keep their strength, and he is freed of every sin.
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)