The Killing of the Demon Naraka

The ācāryas have explained in various plausible ways why Lord Kṛṣṇa took His wife Satyabhāmā with Him. Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī begins by saying that the Lord wanted to give His adventurous wife a novel experience and thus took her to the scene of this extraordinary battle. Also, Lord Kṛṣṇa had once granted the blessing to Bhūmi, the earth-goddess, that He would not kill her demoniac son without her permission. Since Bhūmi is an expansion of Satyabhāmā, the latter could authorize Kṛṣṇa to do the needful with the unusually nasty Bhaumāsura.

Finally, Satyabhāmā had been miffed when Nārada Muni brought a celestial pārijāta flower to Queen Rukmiṇī. To pacify Satyabhāmā, Lord Kṛṣṇa had promised her, “I’ll give you a whole tree of these flowers,” and thus the Lord scheduled this procurement of a heavenly tree within His itinerary.

Even nowadays devoted husbands take their wives shopping, and thus Lord Kṛṣṇa took Satyabhāmā to the heavenly planets to get a heavenly tree, as well as to retrieve the goods Bhaumāsura had stolen and return them to their rightful owners.

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī notes that in the heat of battle Queen Satyabhāmā would naturally become anxious for Lord Kṛṣṇa’s safety and pray for the battle to end. Thus she would readily give permission to Kṛṣṇa to kill the son of her expansion, Bhūmi.

According to Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī, as Bhauma raised his invincible trident, Satyabhāmā, sitting on Garuḍa with the Lord, said to Kṛṣṇa, “Kill him right away,” and Kṛṣṇa did just that.

Queen Kuntī offered this same prayer, which is found in First Canto of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Chapter 8, text 22. The synonyms and translation given here are taken from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s rendering of that text.

We may also note that although Kuntī’s prayer occurs early in the Bhāgavatam, she offered it many years after the incident described here.

The word jagataḥ in the third line of this verse indicates that the functions of creation, maintenance and annihilation are here mentioned in a cosmic context.

The word utkaṭam indicates that when a particular function is being carried out, whether universal creation, maintenance or annihilation, the particular material quality associated with that function becomes predominant.

The earth-goddess, in her prayers, directly touches upon the subtleties of transcendental philosophy, clarifying that although the Supreme Lord is unique and distinct from His creation, His creation has no independent existence and always rests within Him. Thus the Lord and His creation are simultaneously one and different, as explained by Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu five hundred years ago.

To say that everything is God, without any distinction, is meaningless, since nothing can act like God. Dogs, shoes and human beings are hardly omnipotent or omniscient, nor do they create the universe. On the other hand, there is a real sense in which all things are one, for everything is part of the same supreme, absolute reality. Lord Caitanya has given the very useful analogy of the sun and the sun rays. The sun and its sunshine are one reality, for the sun is the celestial body that shines. On the other hand, one can certainly distinguish between the sun globe and the sun rays. Thus God’s simultaneous oneness with and difference from His creation is the final and satisfying explanation of reality. All that exists is the Lord’s potency, and yet He endows the superior potency, the living beings, with free will so that they can become responsible for the moral and spiritual quality of their decisions and activities.

This entire transcendental science is clearly and rationally explained in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Here the earth-goddess seeks protection for her grandson, who has been frightened by all the terribly violent events that just took place.

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī provides evidence from the sage Parāśara, as quoted in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (5.29.31), to the effect that there were actually 16,100 royal maidens imprisoned in Bhauma’s palace:

“Within the maidens’ quarters, O wise one, that Lord of unequaled prowess found 16,100 princesses.”

Another relevant verse from the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (5.29.9) is as follows:

“The demon [Bhaumāsura] kidnapped the unmarried daughters of demigods, siddhas, asuras and kings, O Janārdana, and imprisoned them in his palace.”

It is well known that material wealth and power tend to produce arrogance, and thus an opulent life can often be the royal road to hell.

As Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī explains, here the word yathā indicates that each marriage was duly performed. This means that the entire company of the Lord’s relatives, including His mother Devakī, appeared in each and every palace and attended each and every wedding. Since all these weddings took place simultaneously, this event was surely a manifestation of the Lord’s inconceivable potency.

When Lord Kṛṣṇa does things, He does them in style. So it is not astonishing that the Lord simultaneously appeared in 16,100 wedding ceremonies taking place in 16,100 royal palaces, accompanied in each palace by all His relatives. Indeed, this is the way one would expect the Supreme Personality of Godhead to do things. After all, He is not an ordinary human being.

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī further explains that on this particular occasion the Lord manifested His original form in each of His palaces. In other words, to take part in the wedding vows, He manifested identical forms (prakāśa) in all the palaces.

The word atarka-kṛt is significant here. Tarka means “logic,” and atarka means “that which is beyond logic.” The Lord can perform (kṛt) that which is beyond mundane logic and hence inconceivable. Still, the Lord’s activities can be appreciated and understood to a significant extent by those who surrender unto Him. This is the secret of bhakti, loving devotion to the Supreme Lord.

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī comments that the Lord was always at home except for when He had to go out to do ordinary household duties. And Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī points out that since in the Vaikuṇṭha planets Lord Nārāyaṇa enjoys with only one goddess of fortune and in Dvārakā Kṛṣṇa enjoys with thousands of queens, Dvārakā must be considered superior to Vaikuṇṭha. In this regard Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī also quotes the following passage from the Skanda Purāṇa:

“At that place sixteen thousand gopīs were assembled with Kṛṣṇa, who is considered the Supreme, the Supersoul, the shelter of all living beings. These gopīs are His renowned sixteen potencies, O goddess. Kṛṣṇa is like the moon, the gopīs are like its phases, and the full contingent of gopīs is like the full sequence of the moon’s sixteen phases. Each of these sixteen divisions of gopīs, my dear Varāṅganā, is subdivided into one thousand parts.”

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī further quotes the Kārttika-māhātmya section of the Padma Purāṇa: kaiśore gopa-kanyās tā yauvane rāja-kanyakāḥ. “Those who were the daughters of cowherds in their early youth became royal princesses in their maturity.” The ācārya adds, “Therefore just as the Lord of Dvārakā is a plenary expansion of the supremely complete Lord of Śrī Vṛndāvana, so His principal queens are full expansions of His supremely complete pleasure potencies, the gopīs.”