The story

The eleventh book opens with an ending already set in motion: a curse has fallen on the Yadus. Into Dvaraka at this moment comes Narada, and Vasudeva, Krishna's father, receives him with a question he has carried for a long time.

He wants to know the way of devotion to the Lord, Bhagavata dharma, and he is honest about why he asks. Long ago, he says, he worshipped the Lord who grants freedom, and he asked him for a son. Narada does not lecture him. He tells him a story instead: an old conversation between a king and nine wandering sages.

The king was Nimi of Videha, and the nine arrived during his sacrifice. They were sons of Rishabha, the royal sage whose life fills part of the fifth book. While their brother Bharata ruled, these nine gave up everything and roamed the worlds with no clothing but the air. Their names were Kavi, Havi, Antariksha, Prabuddha, Pippalayana, Avirhotra, Drumila, Chamasa and Karabhajana. Nimi worshipped them and put his questions, and each sage answered one.

Kavi was asked what the highest good is. Fear, he said, arises when a person turns away from the Lord and fixes on something taken to be separate. So the wise worship him with undivided devotion. The ways the Lord himself taught are so secure that a man who follows them could run with his eyes shut and not stumble. Then Kavi gave the practice for which this passage is best known: whatever one does with body, speech, mind, senses, intellect, or simply out of one's own nature, let one offer it all, saying "to Narayana". He described a lover of God who sings the names without embarrassment, laughs, weeps and dances like someone who has lost his wits, and bows to every creature and element as the Lord's own body. Devotion, direct experience of the Lord and indifference to other things come together, he said, the way each mouthful gives a hungry man pleasure, strength and an end to hunger at once.

Havi described the devotee. The highest sees the Lord, his own self, in every creature, and every creature in the Lord. The middle one loves the Lord, befriends his devotees, pities the ignorant and keeps away from those who hate him. The beginner worships the image with faith but has no regard for the Lord's people. Havi ended with a picture of the best: one who would not let go of the Lord's feet for half a moment, not even for the wealth of the three worlds, and who holds those feet in his heart, tied with a cord of love.

Antariksha explained maya as the power by which the one Self makes bodies and enters them, sustains the worlds, and draws them back at the end. Prabuddha said how to cross it. Watch how couples seek happiness and find sorrow, he said, then go to a teacher grounded both in the Veda and in the Supreme, and learn from him the devotee's way. Pippalayana spoke of Narayana as what remains present through waking, dream and deep sleep, unborn and undying. Avirhotra said the Veda speaks indirectly, like a father who promises a child a sweet so that he will take his medicine: its rituals are meant to lead beyond ritual.

Drumila listed the Lord's descents and said that a person who thinks he can count the Lord's qualities is a child, who could sooner count the specks of dust on the earth. Chamasa spoke bluntly of those who do not worship, the proud who harm animals in the name of sacrifice, and of where they go.

The ninth answer, Karabhajana's, is the one most often quoted. Nimi had asked what form and colour the Lord takes in each age and how people worship him. In the Krita age, Karabhajana said, he is white and is reached by meditation; in the Treta, red, and reached by sacrifice; in the Dvapara, dark and dressed in yellow, worshipped with royal honours. In the Kali age the wise worship him above all by singing his names together. People of other ages long to be born in Kali for this reason, he said, and in Kali the Lord's devotees will be found most of all in the Dravida country, along the Tamraparni, the Kaveri and other southern rivers.

Nimi and his priests worshipped the nine, and they vanished. Narada turned back to Vasudeva and Devaki. They had treated the Lord as their child, seen him, touched him, eaten with him. If even his enemies, like Shishupala, reached him by thinking of him without pause, how much surer was the end for them? Hearing this, the two let go of the delusion that he was only their son.

The setting explains why the episode stands where it does. Before the book describes the Yadus' end, it teaches Krishna's own parents what he is. The nine answers also draw a map that the rest of the eleventh book fills in, and Karabhajana's word about Kali points ahead to the twelfth book's judgement on the age.

Verses in this episode

Who appears, and what it shows

• Narada — A wandering sage with a vina who turns up at every turning point — once a maidservant's son, now the teacher of teachers.
• Theme: Devotion as the highest dharma
• Theme: Who is a teacher

Keep reading

• The poor brahmana friend — Skandha 10, adhyayas 80-81 — A starving schoolfriend visits the king of Dvaraka with a cloth of flattened rice, too ashamed to ask for anything.
• The avadhuta's twenty-four teachers — Skandha 11, adhyayas 7-9 — King Yadu asks a carefree wanderer where his joy comes from, and hears of twenty-four teachers, among them a pigeon and a courtesan.

Questions to explore

• What is "Bhagavata dharma" according to the nine yogis?
• How do the nine yogis describe the highest kind of devotee?
• What is the practice of offering everything to Narayana?