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Skandha 11, adhyaya 1 · Saptah day 7
To lift the Yadu clan from the earth, Krishna lets young princes mock the sages with an iron pestle, and Narada comes to Vasudeva.
As the Eleventh Skandha opens (`11.1.1-5`), the great war of Kurukshetra has ended. Having caused the mutual destruction of the demonic kings who had weighed down the globe (`bhubhara-rajasam`) by placing the five Pandava brothers in the forefront of battle (`pandava-anika-vyajena`), Lord **Krishna**—accompanied by his elder brother Balarama and surrounded by the prosperous Vrishni clan—ruled peacefully from the island city of Dvaraka. Yet as Krishna looked out over his own vast, undefeated family, a sober reflection entered his mind (`11.1.2-4`).
"Even though the burden of the earth has been largely removed by the fall of the Kuru and allied armies (`11.1.3`)," Krishna thought to himself, "to my eyes it is still not truly lifted (`avantaritam manye`). Why? Because my own Yadu clan (`yadava-kulam`) has grown unbearable in its military might, courage, and boundless wealth (`durvishaham viryavashri-madoddhatam`), held back only because I am standing among them!" Who in the three worlds—even among the gods—could ever defeat in open battle a clan protected by the Lord of the Yadus (`11.1.4`)? Should Krishna simply return to his own transcendental realm and leave this proud, unconquerable dynasty behind on earth (`11.1.3`), their unchecked power would overrun the world after his departure, just as a forest fire consumes the woods.
Therefore, Krishna resolved (`11.1.4-5`) to bring about the withdrawal of his own clan before leaving the world himself. And how could an invincible family that no external army could touch be brought down? Only through an internal quarrel born of a brahmana's curse (`vipra-shapa-vyapadeshena`), just as a dense grove of dry bamboo is burned to ashes by the friction of its own stalks rubbing together in the wind (`vansha-agnina`, `11.1.4`).
Soon the occasion arrived (`11.1.11-17`). A group of the greatest sages in the universe—**Vishvamitra**, Asita, Kanva, Durvasa, Bhrigu, Angira, Kashyapa, Vasishtha, Vamadeva, Atri, and **Narada** (`11.1.11-12`)—travelled to Dvaraka to behold Krishna and then retired to **Pindaraka**, a sacred pilgrimage ford near the coast (`11.1.12`).
Out at Pindaraka, a band of young Yadu princes—flush with youth, royal privilege, and carelessness (`अविनीताः`, `11.1.13`)—were sporting near the sages' camp. Taking **Samba**, the handsome son of Krishna and Queen Jambavati, the young princes dressed him up in women's silk garments and ornaments, tied a cloth padding under his robe to simulate a pregnant belly, and led him before the austere sages (`11.1.13-14`). Bowing with feigned humility while stifling their laughter, the princes pointed to the disguised Samba and asked the omniscient rishis (`11.1.14-15`): "O unerring sages (`amogha-darshanah`), this bashful dark-eyed woman is about to give birth and is too shy to ask for herself, so she bows to you through us—tell us, will she give birth to a son, as she hopes, or to a daughter?"
Mocked to their faces by arrogant youths, the ascetics answered with a fierce, irrevocable pronouncement (`11.1.16`): > *janayishyati vo manda musalam kula-nashanam*
"Fools (`mandah`)! She will give birth for you to an **iron pestle** (`musalam`) that will destroy your entire clan (`kula-nashanam`)!"
Terror-stricken the moment the words left the sages' mouths (`11.1.17`), the young princes hurriedly untied Samba's waist-cloth right there on the spot—and out fell a heavy **iron pestle** (`ayasa-musalam`)! Pale with dread (`11.1.18`), they carried the iron pestle back to Dvaraka and laid it before King **Ugrasena** and the full assembly of the Yadus (`11.1.19`), confessing what they had done. The citizens of Dvaraka were horrified (`11.1.20`), knowing no mortal can undo a brahmana's word. King Ugrasena immediately ordered smiths to grind the iron pestle down into fine iron powder (`11.1.21`) and had both the iron dust and the one remaining stub of dense iron that could not be filed down (`avakhandam`) thrown into the ocean waves (`11.1.22`).
Yet fate worked silently beneath the water (`11.1.23-24`). A fish swallowed the unground lump of iron; fishermen caught that fish in their nets; and a hunter named **Jara** took the iron piece from the fish's belly and forged it into the tip of his hunting arrow (`11.1.23`). Meanwhile, the ocean tides washed the ground iron powder back up onto the beach at Prabhasa, where it sprouted into a dense forest of razor-sharp, unyielding **eraka reeds** (`11.1.24`). When the all-knowing Lord Krishna was informed of everything, he made no attempt to counter the sages' curse (`11.1.24`), for he himself is Time (`kala-rupih`) and approved the unfolding of his own design.
While these dark portents gathered over Dvaraka, the celestial sage **Narada**—who constantly stayed near Dvaraka out of longing to gaze upon Krishna's feet (`11.2.1-2`)—came one day to the house of Krishna's aged father, **Vasudeva** (`Anakadundubhi`). For a human being trapped in the mortal body (`martya-lingam`) and struck by the three-pronged spear of suffering (`tri-shulapraditam`), what higher fortune can there be than the arrival of a pure devotee of the Lord (`11.2.2`)? Just as the sun gives sight only to the outward eye and rises and sets, a saintly devotee of Mukunda (`bhagavatottamah`) gives the inner eye of wisdom that never sets (`11.2.2`).
Rising eagerly from his seat (`11.2.3`), Vasudeva bowed low to Narada, seated him on a cushion of honour, washed his feet with reverence, and spoke with folded hands (`11.2.4-13`). First, Vasudeva praised the arrival of saints (`11.2.5-6`): whereas the gods act for the welfare of those who offer sacrifices and bring both pleasure and pain (`sukha-duhkha-karah`), the wandering saints of the Lord bring blessing to the destitute (`kripana-vatsalah`) and purify the earth solely by their presence; whatever tracks their feet leave become sacred pilgrimage places (`tirthi-kurvanti tirthani`), just as the sleep, waking, and walking of the Lord himself bring auspiciousness to the world (`11.2.6`).
Then Vasudeva opened his heart (`11.2.7-13`). Looking back at his own life, he admitted frankly (`11.2.9`): in his past births he had worshipped the Lord who grants liberation (`moksha-patih`), and yet instead of asking for freedom from rebirth, he had foolishly asked to have the Lord born as his own son (`11.2.9`)! Now, having lived through Kamsa's dungeons, wars, and the looming shadow over his family, Vasudeva saw the world clearly as a place of perpetual fear and sorrow (`11.2.10-12`).
"O great vow-keeper (`suvrata`)," Vasudeva begged Narada (`11.2.12-13`), "teach me today that **Bhagavata-dharma** (`dharmam bhagavatam`) by hearing which with faith a human being immediately crosses beyond all sorrow and cleanses the mind of attachment to this world of mortality (`11.2.10-13`)!" Just as an indulgent father or mother feels never-ending anxiety for their children, Vasudeva realized that treating the Supreme Lord merely as a household son without grasping the liberating discipline of devotion had kept his heart bound to the wheel of hope and dread. That single, urgent question from Krishna's father in the quiet courtyard of Dvaraka opens the great philosophical dialogues of the Eleventh Skandha.
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