Arjuna Kidnaps Subhadrā, and Kṛṣṇa Blesses His Devotees

Parīkṣit Mahārāja turns now to the topic of the marriage of Lord Kṛṣṇa’s sister, Subhadrā. In the opinion of Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī, King Parīkṣit’s question here follows from the previous narration because Arjuna’s winning the hand of Subhadrā was just as difficult a feat as Lord Kṛṣṇa’s retrieving the sons of Devakī from the realm of the dead, since Lord Balarāma Himself opposed Subhadrā’s marriage to Arjuna.

Arjuna’s plan for obtaining Subhadrā as his wife may have seemed unconventional, but he was not acting without encouragement; in fact, Lord Kṛṣṇa was his prime co-conspirator. And in Dvārakā, most of the members of the royal family, especially Vasudeva, were unhappy about giving their favorite daughter to Duryodhana.

From the explanation of Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī, it is understood that Arjuna in his sannyāsī role had just finished the four-month vows of the rainy season and could now again accept general invitations from householders. Thus no one would have suspected any unusual motive in his visiting Lord Balarāma at this time.

As soon as she saw him, Subhadrā knew that Arjuna was no sannyāsī but rather her destined consort. In Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, His Divine Grace Śrīla Prabhupāda elaborates: “Arjuna, the grandfather of Mahārāja Parīkṣit, was himself extraordinarily beautiful and his bodily structure was very attractive to Subhadrā. Subhadrā also decided within her mind that she would accept only Arjuna as her husband. As a simple girl, she was smiling with great pleasure, looking at Arjuna.”

Even while being honored by Lord Balarāma, Arjuna was too distracted to appreciate the Lord’s gracious hospitality. Arjuna’s distraction and Lord Balarāma’s failure to recognize Arjuna in his disguise were both arrangements of the Supreme Lord to enjoy His transcendental pastimes.

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī identifies this festival as the annual Ratha-yātrā for Lord Viṣṇu on the occasion of His rising from mystic sleep at the end of Cāturmāsya. Subhadrā’s parents are Vasudeva and Devakī.

An ideal Vaiṣṇava brāhmaṇa, even if encumbered by the ties of family life, should work only as hard as required to meet his obligations. Without being unnecessarily agitated for material advancement, he should devote the best part of his time and assets to his higher duties in the Supreme Lord’s service. If a householder can succeed in this program despite the unavoidable difficulties of this degraded age, he can expect Lord Kṛṣṇa’s personal attention, as will be seen in the case of Śrutadeva, the perfect brāhmaṇa of Mithilā.

In his commentary on this verse, Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī states that Śrutadeva and Bahulāśva were unable to travel to Dvārakā to see Lord Kṛṣṇa because both of them had vowed to regularly worship their personal Deity at home. Śrī Kṛṣṇa was very glad to go out of His way to give them both His audience, and while leaving Dvārakā He insisted that the sages who wanted to come with Him should join Him on His chariot, because otherwise they would exhaust themselves following on foot. Renowned sages would ordinarily never even consider traveling in such an opulent conveyance, but on the Lord’s order they put aside their natural aversion and joined Him on His chariot.

Here the sages traveling with Kṛṣṇa on His chariot are likened to planets around the sun.

Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī raises the logical question of how the ordinary people along the path could even see the Lord, since not only were their eyes covered by ignorance, but the Lord’s chariot was traveling faster than the wind. Supplying the answer, Śrīla Jīva indicates that Lord Kṛṣṇa’s special glance of mercy empowered every one of them with the devotional purity required for entering into His association. Otherwise, He would have remained outside the scope of their power to see, as He Himself states in His instructions to Uddhava: bhaktyāham ekayā grāhyaḥ. “I can be perceived only by devotion.” (Bhāg. 11.14.21) By the grammatical rule of compound formation known as eka-śeṣa, the term sta-vīkṣaṇa-vinaṣṭa-tamisra-dṛgbhyaḥ, although in its primary sense inflected as a masculine noun, may be understood in this context as referring to both men and women.

According to Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī, Kṛṣṇa visited Śrutadeva and Bahulāśva at the same time by manifesting Himself in duplicate forms, along with the sages. Thus King Bahulāśva thought that Lord Kṛṣṇa had come only to his house, leaving Śrutadeva to return home disappointed, while Śrutadeva believed that just the reverse was the case.

In Kṛṣṇa, Śrīla Prabhupāda remarks: “That [Lord Kṛṣṇa] and His companions were present in both houses, although both the brāhmaṇa and the King thought He was present in his house only, is another opulence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This opulence is described in the revealed scriptures as vaibhava-prakāśa. Similarly, when Lord Kṛṣṇa married sixteen thousand wives, He also expanded Himself into sixteen thousand forms, each one of them as powerful as He Himself. Similarly, in Vṛndāvana, when Brahmā stole away Kṛṣṇa’s cows, calves and cowherd boys, Kṛṣṇa expanded Himself into many new cows, calves and cowherd boys.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda comments: “Bahulāśva, the King of Videha, was very intelligent and was a perfect gentleman. He was astonished that so many great sages, along with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, were personally present in his home. He knew perfectly well that conditioned souls engaged in worldly affairs cannot be one-hundred-percent pure whereas the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His pure devotees are always transcendental to worldly contamination. Therefore, when he found that the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krsna, and all the great sages were at his home, he was astonished, and he began to thank Lord Krsna for His causeless mercy.”

The word īśvara in this verse refers not only to the Supreme Lord but also to the exalted sages in His company; this is confirmed by Ācāryas Śrīdhara Svāmī and Viśvanātha Cakravartī.

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī explains Bahulāśva’s inner thoughts as follows: Bahulāśva glorifies Lord Kṛṣṇa as the inspiring Soul of all life and consciousness, thinking that even an inert dullard like himself could be awakened to devotional awareness by His mercy. He glorifies the Lord as the witness of all pious and impious actions, confident that the Lord remembers whatever little devotional service he has ever done. And he glorifies Him as self-illumined, never needing to be enlightened or informed by any external source, with the knowledge that the Lord has always been aware of Bahulāśva’s long-cherished secret desire to see Him.

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī comments that the King offered these prayers to encourage Lord Kṛṣṇa to remain at his home for some days. The King thought, “Since contact with the Supreme Lord can free anyone from misconceptions and doubts, Kṛṣṇa’s presence in my home will fortify my intelligence so that I can withstand the onslaughts of material desires. In His expansion as Nara-Nārāyaṇa Ṛṣi, the Lord always resides in Badarikāśrama for the good of the whole land of Bharata, and so He may also create good fortune for the land of Mithilā by remaining here for at least a few days. Since Lord Kṛṣṇa’s propensity is toward peace and simplicity, He will certainly prefer my simple home to the excessive opulence of Dvārakā.”

To provide even this simple welcome, Śrutadeva had to go next door to his neighbors and borrow extra mats. This insight is provided by Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī.

In the illusion of his dream, a sleeping person creates an apparent world, complete with cities populated by the fictional products of his imagination. In somewhat the same way, the Lord manifests the cosmos. Of course, the creation is not illusory for the Lord, but it is for those souls who are put under the control of His Māyā potency. As her service to the Lord, Māyā deludes the conditioned souls into accepting as real her temporary, insubstantial manifestations.

The all-merciful Lord is in everyone’s heart. Seeing Him there, however, is possible only when one’s heart is completely purified. Materialists may demand that God prove His existence by coming into view as a result of their empirical investigations, but God has no need to respond to such impudence. As Lord Kṛṣṇa states in Bhagavad-gītā (7.25):

“I am never manifest to the foolish and unintelligent. For them I am covered by My internal potency, and therefore they do not know that I am unborn and infallible.”

When the Lord appears before His devotees in His eternal, spiritual form, their eyes become “uncovered” in the sense that all vestiges of illusion are dispelled and they drink in the beautiful vision of the Absolute Truth, the Personality of Godhead. For the nondevotees, on the other hand, the Lord “appears” as material nature, His universal form, and in this way He covers their vision so that His spiritual, personal form remains invisible to them.

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī gives another interpretation of this verse, based on an alternative understanding of anātmane, a form of the word anātmā: Various classes of men know the Absolute Truth in different ways. The devotees of the Lord who are in the reciprocal mood of neutral admiration (śānta-rasa) meditate on the Supreme as possessing a divine, personal form (ātmā or śrī-vigraha) transcending all aspects of material illusion. The impersonal philosophers (jñānīs) conceive of Him as formless (anātmā). And the envious demons see Him in the form of death.

Ācārya Viśvanātha comments that Lord Kṛṣṇa took Śrutadeva’s hand and smiled as a gesture of friendship, to tell Him, “Yes, you know the truth about Me, and I also know all about you. So now I will tell you something special.”

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī explains that Lord Kṛṣṇa thought Śrutadeva had shown too much reverence to Him and not enough to the sages, and thus He turned the brāhmaṇa’s attention to them.

Rather than remaining in seclusion and concentrating on their own perfection, Vaiṣṇava brāhmaṇas of the highest order dedicate their lives to sharing the benediction of the Lord’s devotional service. In the words of the sons of King Prācīnabarhi:

“Dear Lord, Your personal associates, Your devotees, wander all over the world to purify even the holy places of pilgrimage. Is not such activity pleasing to those who are actually afraid of material existence?” (Bhāg. 4.30.37) And Prahlāda Mahārāja says:

“My dear Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, I see that there are many saintly persons indeed, but they are interested only in their own deliverance. Not caring for the big cities and towns, they go to the Himālayas or the forest to meditate with vows of silence [mauna-vrata]. They are not interested in delivering others. As for me, however, I do not wish to be liberated alone, leaving aside all these poor fools and rascals. I know that without Kṛṣṇa consciousness, without taking shelter of Your lotus feet, one cannot be happy. Therefore I wish to bring them back to shelter at Your lotus feet.” (Bhāg. 7.9.44)

It is understood from the Vedic science of epistemology, the Nyāya-śāstra, that knowledge of an object (prameya) depends on a valid means of knowing (pramāṇa). The Supreme Personality of Godhead can be known only by means of the Vedas, and thus He relies on the brāhmaṇa sages, who are the Vedas personified, to reveal Him in this world. Even though Lord Kṛṣṇa embodies all the demigods and viṣṇu-tattva expansions of Nārāyaṇa, He considers Himself obliged to the brāhmaṇas.

In his narration of this pastime in Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda concludes: “The instruction we receive from this incident is that King Bahulāśva and Śrutadeva the brāhmaṇa were accepted by the Lord on the same level because both were pure devotees. This is the real qualification for being recognized by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Because it has become the fashion of this age to become falsely proud of having taken birth in the family of a kṣatriya or a brāhmaṇa, we see persons without any qualification claiming to be brāhmaṇa or kṣatriya or vaiśya. But as it is stated in the scriptures, kalau śūdra-sambhava: ‘In this Age of Kali, everyone is born a śūdra.’ This is because there is no performance of the purificatory process known as saṁskāras, which begin from the time of the mother’s pregnancy and continue up to the point of the individual’s death. No one can be classified as a member of a particular caste, especially of a higher caste — brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya or vaiśya — simply by birthright. If one is not purified by the process of the seed-giving ceremony, or garbhādhāna-saṁskāra, he is immediately classified among the śūdras because only the śūdras do not undergo this purificatory process. Sex life without the purificatory process of Kṛṣṇa consciousness is merely the seed-giving process of the śūdras or the animals. But Kṛṣṇa consciousness is the highest perfection, by which everyone can come to the platform of a Vaiṣṇava. This includes having all the qualifications of a brāhmaṇa. The Vaiṣṇavas are trained to become freed from the four kinds of sinful activities — illicit sex, indulgence in intoxicants, gambling and eating animal foodstuffs. No one can be on the brahminical platform without having these preliminary qualifications, and without becoming a qualified brāhmaṇa, one cannot become a pure devotee.”