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Skandha 10, adhyayas 82-84 · Saptah day 7
At a solar eclipse at Samantapanchaka, the cowherds and gopis of Vraja meet Krishna again, and the queens tell Draupadi how they wed.
Many years after Krishna left Vraja for Mathura and built his island kingdom of Dvaraka in the western ocean, astronomical calculations announced an impending total solar eclipse (`surya-parvani`, `10.82.1-2`), like the darkness at the end of a cosmic age. To bathe in sacred waters and give charity during the eclipse, kings and pilgrims from every corner of Bharatavarsha converged upon **Samantapanchaka** at **Kurukshetra**—the five sacred lakes that Parashurama had once filled during his campaign to cleanse the earth of arrogant warrior-rulers (`10.82.2-3`).
Leaving only Aniruddha and Kritavarma behind to guard Dvaraka (`10.82.6`), the entire Vrishni clan—Vasudeva, Akrura, Ugrasena, Balarama, Pradyumna, Samba, and Krishna with his queens—travelled in a vast caravan of golden chariots, elephants, and horses that shone like the hosts of heaven (`10.82.4-9`). After bathing, fasting, and gifting cows decorated with gold cloths and garlands to the brahmanas while praying for unswerving devotion to Krishna (`krishne no bhaktir astv iti`, `10.82.10`), the Yadus pitched camp beneath shady trees and greeted their allies and kinsmen from the Kuru, Panchala, Kekaya, Kosala, and Vidarbha lands (`10.82.12-13`): Bhishma, Drona, Dhritarashtra and his hundred sons led by Duryodhana, Gandhari, **Kunti**, the five Pandava brothers, Draupadi, and Subhadra (`10.82.22-26`).
And into that vast royal assembly rode the ox-carts of **Nanda Maharaja**, **Mother Yashoda**, and the cowherds and **gopis of Vraja** (`10.82.14`), who had suffered so long in separation from their beloved (`tad-anushangika-duhkha`) and had come to Kurukshetra yearning only to see him again. When the people of Vraja caught sight of the Vrishnis, they sprang up just as the senses leap to life when the vital breath returns (`10.82.15`).
The reunion was overwhelming (`10.82.16-21`). **Vasudeva** embraced his dear friend Nanda (`10.82.16`), remembering every hardship Kamsa had inflicted on him and how Nanda had sheltered his two sons in Gokula (`10.82.16`). Krishna and Balarama embraced Nanda and Yashoda, bowed low at their foster-parents' feet, and stood unable to speak a single word because their throats were choked with tears of love (`प्रेमकण्ठावरोधेन नोचतुः कश्चन प्रभुः`, `10.82.17`). Seating both boys on their laps and holding them against their chests (`10.82.18`), Nanda and Yashoda bathed them in tears while every trace of their long grief vanished. Meanwhile, Rohini and **Devaki** embraced Mother Yashoda (`10.82.19`) and praised the unmatched bond of friendship the queen of Vraja had kept with them (`10.82.20-21`): "Has any woman ever forgotten the care you and Nanda gave our children? Even parents who give birth do not nurture their sons the way you nurtured ours!"
Most poignant of all was the meeting between Krishna and the **gopis of Vraja** (`10.82.39-48`). Standing before him after years of separation, the cowherd women drank in his smiling face with wide eyes—and immediately cursed the Creator Brahma for giving human eyes lids that blink (`निमेषाणाम् अपि क्षिप्रम् अकल्पयत्`, `10.82.39`), just as they had done in the Gopi Gita (`10.31.15`), because every blink interrupted their sight of him! Drawing him through their eyes into the inner chambers of their hearts, they embraced his body in deep meditation (`योगेश्वराः इव`, `10.82.40`) until even hardened yogis could not match their absorption.
Seeing their state, the Lord walked to a secluded spot, embraced each of them, asked softly whether they were well, and smiled as he asked (`10.82.41-43`): "Friends, do you still remember us, who stayed away so long carrying out the work of our kinsmen and destroying enemies? Or do you think light-heartedly of us with contempt? Wait—surely it is the Supreme Spirit (`ishvarah`) who joins beings together and separates them again, just as the wind blows clouds, grass, cotton, and dust together and scatters them (`10.82.43`)!" And he added (`10.82.44`): attaining loving devotion (`bhaktir mayi`) Toward him brings living beings straight to immortality (`kalpate 'mritatvaya`), because he is the beginning and end of all things (`10.82.45`): just as the five elements—earth, water, fire, air, and ether—enter into and permeate all physical forms, so he resides as the indwelling Consciousness inside all living beings (`10.82.45`).
instructed by Krishna in the inner truth of the Self (`adhyatma-sikshaya`, `10.82.46`), the gopis cast off the subtle knot of bodily identification (`jiva-kosham`) through constant meditation on him and sang one haunting, two-verse prayer (`10.82.47-48`): "Let your lotus feet—meditated upon by the great masters of yoga inside the heart while Kings and householders have fallen into the dark well of household duties (`griha-andha-kupa-patitam`, `10.82.48`)—dwell forever in our minds (`sada nah smritim avrajat`)!"
While the men and women of Kurukshetra talked together, **Draupadi** approached the queens of Dvaraka in Chapter 83 (`10.83.1-43`) and asked each of the eight principal queens (`ashtamahishyah`) to tell the story of how the independent Lord came to marry her (`10.83.3`). One by one they answered (`10.83.5-40`): - **Rukmini** recounted how he carried her off from the circle of kings like a lion taking its share from goats and jackals, and she prayed always to have the dust of his feet (`10.83.5-6`). - **Satyabhama** told how her father Satrajit falsely blamed Krishna for the Syamantaka jewel after a bear (Jambavan) killed his brother Prasena, and then gave both her and the gem to make amends (`10.83.7-9`). - **Jambavati** told how her father Jambavan fought Krishna for twenty-eight days inside his mountain cave before recognizing him as his own Lord Rama and offering his daughter (`10.83.10-12`). - **Kalindi** told how she performed penance in the Yamuna waters until Krishna and Arjuna found her and brought her home (`10.83.13-14`). - **Mitravinda** told how Krishna carried her off from her svayamvara in front of her brothers Vinda and Anuvinda (`10.83.15-16`). - **Satya (Nagnajiti)** told how her father King Nagnajit of Kosala vowed to give her only to one who could tame seven wild, sharp-horned bulls (`sapta-vrishan`), and how Krishna divided himself into seven forms (`atmanam saptadha kritva`, `10.83.22`) to nose-rope them like wooden toys (`10.83.17-25`). - **Bhadra** told how her father Santardana (and brothers in Kekaya) offered her freely to her cousin (`10.83.26-28`). - **Lakshmana** told how her father Brihatsena set a revolving fish target overhead visible only as a reflection in a bowl of water below, and how after Karna, Duryodhana, Jarasandha, and even Arjuna fell short (`10.83.31-33`), Krishna pierced it with a single arrow (`10.83.29-39`). And **Rohini**, speaking for the sixteen thousand princesses rescued from Narakasura's prison (`10.83.40-43`), said they desired neither empire nor heaven, only to carry the dust of his feet on their heads birth after birth.
In Chapter 84 (`10.84`), the great sages of the universe—Vyasa, Narada, Cyavana, Devala, Asita, Visvamitra, Parashurama, Vasishtha, and Gautama—arrived at Kurukshetra (`10.84.2-5`). Welcoming them with reverence, Krishna uttered his famous corrective to pilgrimage (`10.84.11-13`): streams of water are not the real sacred fords, nor are statues of earth and stone the only deities; those purify only after a long time, whereas saintly sages purify at first sight (`darshanad eva sadhavah`, `10.84.11`). Whoever treats his own body formed of the three elements (bile, phlegm, and wind) as the Self, his family as his own, earthen shapes as the whole truth, and mere water as the supreme tirtha, while failing to revere the wise, is nothing more than a "donkey among cows" (`go-kharah`, `10.84.13`).
After the sages conducted grand Vedic sacrifices for **Vasudeva** so he could cross his remaining karmic debt to the rishis (`10.84.27-54`), Nanda and the cowherds stayed for three months in deep affection before finally embracing Vasudeva, Krishna, and Balarama and returning to Vraja with their hearts full of Kurukshetra (`10.84.59-71`).
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