The story

Told by Narada that the boys growing up among the cowherds were Vasudeva's sons, Kamsa had set a trap in Mathura, a festival of the bow with wrestlers and a maddened elephant waiting, and had sent Akrura, a respected elder of the Yadus whom he called his closest friend, to bring them.

The irony that drives these chapters is that Akrura was a devotee. The whole way to Vraja he could think of nothing but the person he was being sent to fetch. What good had he ever done, he asked himself, that he should see those feet today? Would Krishna place his hand on his head? He had been sent by an enemy, but Krishna, who sees into every heart, would know what was in his.

He reached Vraja at sunset. In the dust of the cow-paths he saw footprints marked with the lotus, the barley and the goad, and he leapt down from his chariot and rolled in that dust, overcome. Then he saw the two brothers at the milking ground, and they embraced him and took him home. They washed his feet and fed him, and Nanda asked how the Yadus could live at all under Kamsa, like sheep kept by a butcher.

That night Akrura told them everything: Kamsa's plot, and what Narada had revealed. The brothers laughed and told Nanda, who gave orders to load the carts with milk and butter as gifts for the king. The gopis were inconsolable. They railed at the creator, who brings people together only to part them, and at the man himself: his name meant not cruel, they said, and no one was crueller. Krishna sent them word that he would come back.

On the road they stopped by the Yamuna, and Akrura went down into a pool to bathe. Under the water he saw Krishna and Balarama. Startled, he came up, and there they were, still sitting in the chariot. He went under again and saw Ananta, the serpent of a thousand heads, and upon him the four-armed Lord, dark as a cloud, dressed in yellow, surrounded by sages and attended by Lakshmi. Akrura's prayer in the fortieth chapter follows. When he came back to the chariot, still shaken, Krishna asked if he had seen something wonderful. Whatever wonders there are, Akrura said, are all in you; having seen you, what is left to see?

In Mathura the boys walked into the city with their friends. A washerman of the king's refused them clothes and was killed; a weaver dressed them; a garland-maker named Sudama gave them flowers and was blessed. A hunchbacked woman carrying sandal paste for the king gave it to Krishna instead, and he straightened her body. At the arena he broke the great bow, and the next morning killed the elephant at the gate and walked in carrying its tusks.

The text pauses to show how differently that crowd saw him. To the wrestlers he was a thunderbolt, to the men the best of men, to the women love made visible, to the cowherds their own kinsman, to wicked kings a punisher, to his parents a child, to Kamsa death, to the ignorant the cosmic form, to yogis the highest truth, to the Vrishnis their own god.

Krishna fought Chanura and Balarama fought Mushtika, and both wrestlers fell. Kamsa, losing his nerve, ordered the boys driven out, Nanda chained, and Vasudeva and his own father Ugrasena killed. Krishna sprang up onto the royal platform, seized Kamsa by the hair, threw him down into the arena and fell on him, and Kamsa died.

Then the text says something remarkable. Kamsa had lived in constant dread of the Lord: drinking, eating, walking, sleeping, breathing, he saw before him the one with the discus. And so he attained that same form, which is so hard to attain. His brothers attacked and were killed, his wives mourned him, and Krishna himself saw that his funeral rites were performed. Then the brothers went to the prison, unchained Vasudeva and Devaki, and bowed to them.

The arc that began with a voice at a wedding procession closes here. Kamsa's life was ruled by one fear, and in the Bhagavatam's reckoning that fear was itself a form of remembrance. Akrura and Kamsa stand on either side of the same chariot journey: one carried to God by love, the other by terror, and the text lets both arrive.

Who appears, and what it shows

• Akrura — The uncle sent by Kamsa to lure Krishna to Mathura, who spent the whole journey longing to touch the dust of Krishna's feet.
• Krishna — Not one avatar among many but 'the Lord himself' (1.3.28) — and the tenth book spends ninety chapters on his single life.
• Kamsa — Krishna's uncle, warned at his sister's wedding that her eighth child would kill him, who thought of Krishna every waking hour.
• Theme: Devotion as the highest dharma
• Theme: The descents of the Lord

Keep reading

• The Rasa dance — Skandha 10, adhyayas 29-33 — On an autumn night the flute calls and the gopis leave everything; then Krishna vanishes, and their song of longing is the Gopi Gita.
• Uddhava in Vraja — the song to the bee — Skandha 10, adhyayas 46-47 — Krishna sends his wisest friend to console the gopis with philosophy, and Uddhava goes home wishing to be a creeper in Vrindavan.

Questions to explore

• Why did Kamsa send a devotee to fetch Krishna?
• What did Akrura see when he bathed in the Yamuna?
• Why did Kamsa attain liberation even though he hated Krishna?