Sanatani
Opening your Sanatani workspace
Skandha 7, adhyayas 8-10 · Saptah day 3
'Is he in this pillar?' The king strikes it, and the Lord comes out in a form the boon never thought to forbid.
The teachers came to Hiranyakashipu in fear: Prahlada was teaching devotion to all the other boys. The king, shaking with anger, summoned his son and demanded to know by whose strength he dared defy a ruler who made the worlds tremble.
Prahlada answered that it was the same strength by which his father, and everything else, stood: the Lord, who is Time and the power in every being. Give up this demonic temper, he urged him; see all beings as equal. The only real enemy is an uncontrolled mind.
His father told him he must want to die. Where is this lord of the world, other than me? If he is everywhere, why do I not see him in this pillar? I will cut off your head now; let your Hari protect you. He sprang from his throne, sword in hand, and struck the pillar with his fist.
A sound came out of it so terrible that it seemed the shell of the universe had cracked. Then, the text says, to make his servant's words true and to show that he is present in every being, the Lord appeared in the pillar, in a form that was neither man nor beast. He had a man's body and a lion's face, a mane like gold, eyes like molten metal, a tongue like a razor, and claws for weapons.
Hiranyakashipu rushed at him with his club. Narasimha caught him as Garuda catches a snake; the king slipped free, and for a time the Lord let him fight. Then, at twilight, at the threshold of the hall, he laid the king across his thighs and tore him open with his nails.
Every condition of the boon was kept. The slayer was no being Brahma had made; he was neither man nor beast; it was neither day nor night, neither inside nor outside; a lap is neither ground nor sky; and nails are not a weapon.
The gods gathered and praised him one after another: Brahma, Rudra, Indra, the sages, the ancestors, the Siddhas, the Gandharvas and many more. But Narasimha's anger did not cool, and none of them dared go near him. Even Lakshmi was afraid to approach; she had never seen this form. At last Brahma turned to the child. Go, my son, he said, and calm the Lord, who is angry with your father.
Prahlada went quietly and fell at his feet. Narasimha lifted him up and laid his hand on the boy's head, and at that touch every trace of fear left him. Then he prayed.
How, he began, can a child of a demon family praise the one whom the gods themselves could not? Wealth, birth, beauty, austerity, learning, strength, yoga: none of these wins the Lord; devotion does. A devoted outcaste, he said, is better than a brahmana with every virtue who has turned away from the Lord's feet. I am not afraid of your fierce form, he told Narasimha; what I fear is this world and its endless grinding. And he would not seek freedom for himself alone, leaving behind the foolish who are lost in it.
Narasimha offered him any boon he liked. Prahlada saw that as one more test. A servant who serves in order to get something, he said, is not a servant but a trader. Grant me only that no desire ever rises in my heart. The Lord insisted that he rule as king for his allotted time, and Prahlada asked for one more thing: that his father, who had reviled the Lord and tormented his own son, be purified.
The answer went beyond the request. Not only your father, the Lord told him, but twenty-one generations of your forefathers are purified, because you were born in that house. Go and perform his funeral rites.
Prahlada did, and was crowned. The Lord warned Brahma never again to grant such boons to the asuras, and vanished.
The chapter ends by stepping back. These two brothers, Narada explains, were Vishnu's own doorkeepers, cursed by sages to be born three times as his enemies. This was the first of those births; later they would be Ravana and Kumbhakarna, and then Shishupala and Dantavakra, who reached the Lord through the intensity of their enmity. That is the frame the seventh book sets around its most violent scene. The Lord bursts out of a pillar for a child's sake, and the story closes with the child asking mercy for the father who tried to kill him, and receiving more than he asked.
Opening your Sanatani workspace