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To lighten the burden of the world, Lord Krishna, with Balarama at his side, had struck down countless daityas and cruel kings, and at the last, allied with Arjuna, he had destroyed eighteen akshauhinis (army divisions) of warriors and so eased the weight the earth bore. Only one task now remained: the closing of his own line. And this too he brought about, using a curse laid by brahmanas as the occasion for it.
The Sages’ Curse
One day, at the great pilgrimage site called Pindaraka, some of the young Yadava princes came upon a company of great sages, among them Vishvamitra, Kanva, and Narada. Drunk on the pride of youth, and driven, it seemed, by what fate had already written, the boys dressed Samba, the son of Jambavati, in a woman’s clothing and led him before the sages. Feigning humility, they asked, “This woman longs for a son, O sages. Tell us, what will she bear?” Deceived in this way, the sages, who could see clear across the reach of time, grew angry and spoke: “She will bring forth an iron pestle that will be the cause of the ruin of all the Yadavas, and by it your whole race will be uprooted from the world.”
Terrified, the boys carried the entire account to Ugrasena, and true to the curse, an iron pestle came forth from Samba’s belly. Ugrasena had it ground down to powder and ordered the powder cast into the sea, and from it a dense growth of reeds sprang up along the shore. One sharp, spearlike sliver of iron survived the grinding, and it too was thrown into the sea. A fish swallowed it, and when the fish was caught, a hunter named Jara took the fragment from its belly. Lord Madhusudana knew all of this, yet he had no wish to turn aside the will of the creator.
The Omens of Dwarka and the Journey to Prabhasa
At this same time the gods sent Vayu, the wind, as their messenger. Bowing, Vayu said, “O all-pervading one, Indra sends word, and with him the Vasus, the Ashvini twins, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts, and the Sadhyas: more than a hundred years have passed since you came down to the circle of the earth. The wicked daityas have been killed, the burden of the earth has been lifted. Now, if it pleases you, take the gods once more into your keeping and return to the realm of heaven.” The Lord answered, “Messenger, everything you say I already know. The destruction of the Yadavas I have myself set in motion. Until they are gone, the earth’s burden will not be fully eased. And so, within seven nights, I will gather them in and come to heaven as well. This land of Dwarka, which I once asked of the ocean, I will give back to the ocean before I go.” Vayu bowed and returned.
Meanwhile, in Dwarka, day and night, great portents of ruin began to appear, in the sky, on the earth, and in the space between. Seeing them, the Lord said to the Yadavas, “Look at these terrible disturbances. To quiet them, let us go at once to the field of Prabhasa.” At that, Uddhava, the great devotee, bowed and said, “Lord, it seems to me you mean now to destroy this dynasty. What is your command for me?” The Lord replied, “Uddhava, by my grace, travel by divine passage to the hermitage of Nara and Narayana at Gandhamadana, to Badarikashrama. That is the most sacred place on earth. There, fixing your mind on me, you will attain perfection. When I go to heaven, the ocean will drown all of Dwarka, save for my own dwelling alone, where I abide forever for the good of my devotees.” Uddhava bowed and set out for Badarikashrama.
The Destruction of the Yadavas at Prabhasa
After this, all the Yadavas mounted swift chariots and reached Prabhasa with Krishna and Balarama. There the Yadavas of the Kukura, Andhaka, and Vrishni lines drank wine, moved to it by Vasudeva’s own prompting. As they drank, a quarrel flared over such talk as “My food alone is pure, no one else’s,” and that single ill word became the fuel from which a fire of strife, ruinous as the ending of an age, blazed up. Compelled by the will of the gods, their eyes red with rage, they began to turn their weapons on one another. And when the weapons were spent, they seized the reeds growing near at hand.
The moment the reeds came into their hands they turned hard as thunderbolts, and with those thunderbolts the Yadavas fell upon one another: Pradyumna, Samba, Kritavarma, Satyaki, Aniruddha, Prithu, Viprithu, Charuvarma, Akrura, and the rest. When the Lord tried to hold them back, they took him for an ally of the other side and rushed at him as well. Then, in anger, the Lord himself took up a fistful of reeds, which became an iron pestle in his hand, and with it he killed every one of the raging Yadavas. In a short while, apart from the great Krishna and his charioteer Daruka, no Yadava was left alive. And the Lord’s weapons, the conch, the discus, the mace, the Sharnga bow, and the sword, rose upward along the path of the sun.
Balarama and Krishna Return to Their Own Abode
Wandering there, the two of them saw Balarama seated beneath a tree, and from his mouth a vast, hooded serpent was emerging. Honored by the Siddhas and the Nagas, the serpent moved toward the ocean, and the ocean, offering it a welcome of water, received it in. Seeing Balarama depart in this way, the Lord said to Daruka, “Go to Ugrasena and Vasudeva and tell them that Balabhadra has gone, that the Yadavas are destroyed, and that I too, fixed in yoga, will leave my body. The ocean will now drown the whole city. Let everyone wait for Arjuna to come and go from here with him. After us, Vajra will be king of the Yadu line.” Bowing again and again, Daruka went to Dwarka, told this to all, and had Vajra consecrated as king.
Then Lord Govinda placed his own self, the self of all beings, into the supreme Brahman, drew his play to a close, and settled into the fourth state, turiya. At that moment, to honor the word of Durvasa (who long before had cursed that his foot would one day be pierced), he sat in yoga with one foot resting across the other thigh. Just then the hunter named Jara arrived, the one who had fixed the surviving fragment of iron from the pestle to the tip of his arrow. Taking the sole of the Lord’s foot for the mouth of a deer, he pierced it with his arrow from a distance. When he came near and saw a four-armed being, he fell at the Lord’s feet and said again and again, “Be pleased with me, be pleased with me. I did this wrong without knowing, mistaking you for a deer. Please forgive me.” The Lord said, “Do not be afraid in the least. By my grace, go now to heaven, the world of the gods.” As the words were completed, a celestial craft arrived, and the hunter boarded it and rose to heaven. After this, the Lord, merging into his own imperishable, unthinkable, unborn, and deathless form as Vishnu, left this human body behind.
Dwarka Beneath the Waters and the Crowning of Parikshit
Arjuna searched out the bodies of Rama, Krishna, and the other chief Yadavas and performed their funeral rites one by one. Rukmini and the seven other principal queens embraced the Lord’s body and entered the fire; the faithful Revati entered it with Balarama’s body, and on hearing this grievous news, Ugrasena, Vasudeva, Devaki, and Rohini entered the fire as well. Then Arjuna led Vajra, the remaining kinsfolk, and the thousands of Krishna’s wives out of Dwarka. On the very day the Lord left the earth, the Sudharma hall and the Parijata tree returned to heaven, and the mighty Kali Yuga, dark of body, came and settled upon the earth. The ocean drowned Dwarka, now emptied of its people. Only the one dwelling of Krishna it did not drown, for there the Lord abides forever.
On the road a strange thing happened. Seeing the lone archer Arjuna leading those defenseless women, greed woke in the hearts of the Abhira bandits, and they fell upon the party with staves and clods of earth. The wonder of it was this: the same Arjuna who had defeated Bhishma, Drona, and Karna could not even string his Gandiva properly that day. The mantras of his weapons slipped from his memory, and the arrows of his inexhaustible quiver ran dry. Before his very eyes, those base Abhiras carried off many of the women. Grieving, Arjuna understood that all his strength had been the power of Krishna, and that this power had now left him.
Vyasa explained the secret of it to him. Long ago the great sage Ashtavakra had been performing austerities while submerged in water. When the apsaras Rambha, Tilottama, and others began to sing his praises, the sage, well pleased, granted them the boon that they would win Purushottama himself as their husband. But as he came up out of the water, they laughed at the sight of his bent, crooked body, and the sage cursed them that even after gaining Purushottama they would fall into the hands of robbers. Those same apsaras became the wives of Krishna, and by that curse they fell into the hands of the Abhiras.
Then Vyasa said, “Pandava, do not grieve. The Lord of all has himself brought the whole Yadu line to its close, and now the end of your own days draws near as well. Whatever is born is certain to die, whatever rises is certain to fall, every meeting ends in parting, and every gathering ends in loss. Knowing this, the wise neither grieve over what they lose nor rejoice over what they gain. So leave the kingdom, take your brothers, and go to the forest for tapas (austerity).” Arjuna returned to Indraprastha and told everything to Yudhishthira and his other brothers. Then the Pandavas consecrated Parikshit to the throne and themselves departed for the forest.
This same episode comes in fuller detail in the Srimad Bhagavatam (see the account in the Srimad Bhagavatam), though this telling in the Vishnu Purana is older and more compact. Whoever listens with faith to the play that Lord Vasudeva performed by taking birth in the Yadu dynasty is freed from all his sins and goes in the end to the realm of Vishnu.
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)