Brahmā Vimohana Līlā

The Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, in Chapters 13 and 14 of the tenth skanda, tells how Brahmā was bewildered by Bhagavān Kṛshṇa in His childhood. Brahmā wanted to test the child who had so easily killed Aghāsura. He hid the cowherd boys and their calves. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa became every one of the missing boys and calves for a full year. When Brahmā came back, he saw each of them as a four-armed form of Bhagavān Vishṇu. He bowed to Bhagavān Kṛshṇa and sang a stotra of great depth.

Brahmā’s test

After the death of Aghāsura, the gopa boys (the young cowherds) sat down on the bank of the Yamunā for their midday meal. They let their calves graze nearby and enjoyed their lunch in the shade. The scene was happy and ordinary.

Brahmā watched from above and was filled with curiosity. He had seen how Bhagavān Kṛshṇa walked into the mouth of Aghāsura and destroyed the mighty asura from inside. That deed had made it very plain who this child was. Brahmā wished to see the reach of Kṛshṇa’s power from another side. Kṛshṇa had gone for a short while to find one calf that had wandered off. In that time Brahmā used his divine power to hide all the other calves and all the gopa boys. By his māyā he took them to a cave, or to a place of deep sleep.

When Kṛshṇa came back, the bank of the Yamunā was empty. There were no calves and no boys. He understood at once what had happened. He showed no sign of alarm. He chose an answer that both showed his nature and took care of everyone involved.

Kṛshṇa becomes all of them

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa spread himself into the exact forms of every missing boy and every missing calf. Each had its own features, its own voice, its own way of walking and its own name. He became all of them at the same moment: one Kṛshṇa in hundreds of different forms. These forms went back to Gokula as if nothing had happened. The “boys” went to their own homes and the “calves” went into their own cow-pens.

For a full year (a human year; the year of Brahmā is far longer) these forms lived the ordinary life of the gopa boys and the calves. They ate, played, slept, argued and laughed. Every mother in Gokula felt a strange, deeper love for her child, as if the child gave off a new warmth and beauty. Even the cows felt their love for their calves grow stronger in a way they could not explain. No one understood why, but everyone felt it.

Balarāma’s insight

Balarāma is the elder brother of Kṛshṇa and an aṃśa (part) of Ādi Śesha. He saw what was happening. He saw that the gopīs and the mothers showed an unusual strength of love. He knew there could be no ordinary reason for it. He began to ask himself whether something was different about the boys. Were these the real boys, or someone else? His inner sense told him that they were not ordinary humans, and that something of the highest divine meaning was present in what looked like ordinary gopa boys. With his own natural clarity he understood that this was somehow the work of Kṛshṇa. But the whole truth of the matter was not at once clear even to him.

Brahmā returns and sees

After a full year had passed by human count, Brahmā came back to see what had happened. His own sense of time was different. He expected to find Kṛshṇa searching, and the missing boys still hidden in the place where he had hidden them.

What he found left him stunned. Every gopa boy and every calf that he had hidden was there, but each one showed as a four-armed form of Bhagavān Vishṇu, dark and shining. Each wore yellow garments and the Vaijayantī garland. Each held the śaṅkha (conch), cakra (discus), gadā (mace) and padma (lotus), and wore a divine crown. Around each form the whole court of cosmic powers stood in attendance. The Vedas were there, and the Upanishads, and the four Sanaka brothers and the others of their line, and the Āgamas, and all the cosmic tattvas (principles of creation). Each had its own divine form, and each walked around Bhagavān Kṛshṇa and served him. The boys Brahmā had thought were ordinary cowherds were in truth forms of the Parabrahman himself.

Brahmā fell into a deep faint.

Brahmā’s stotra

When Brahmā came to his senses, he bowed down before Bhagavān Kṛshṇa in full surrender. He offered a stotra (hymn of praise) of great depth. It is among the best-known passages of the whole Bhāgavata. In this stotra Brahmā did the following.

• He praised the gopāla-bāla form of Kṛshṇa in particular. It is dark like a rain-cloud. Its garments are yellow like lightning. The face is decorated with karṇikāra flowers and peacock feathers. The child carries a ball of rice (anna-muddā), a stick (daṇḍa), a horn (śṛṅga) and a flute (veṇu). This cowherd child is also the Parabrahman.
• He admitted his own mistake in challenging Kṛshṇa: “I am born of rajas-guṇa. In my pride I thought I had power before you, like sparks that think they can challenge the fire.”
• He said that the greatest means of moksha (liberation) is not jñāna alone but bhakti: “Those who practise dry jñāna without bhakti get only kleśa (trouble), like one who husks empty grain and gets only labour.”
• He praised the good fortune of Gokula: “Ah, what fortune! The eternal, beginningless, full Parabrahman became the friend of the people of Nanda’s Gokula.”
• He called even the animals and trees of Gokula supremely fortunate, and said: “What puṇya (merit) did the mothers of the gopas earn in past lives, that the Eternal One drank at their breasts and called them Mother?”
• He praised the liberation of Pūtanā: “Even she who came to kill with poisoned milk was taken as a mother and freed. What then of the true bhaktas of Gokula?”
• He spoke of the ātma-tattva: all beings are dear only because the ātman is dear. Kṛshṇa is that very ātman of all beings. This is why the gopas, the gopīs and the cows love him with a love deeper than the love they have for their own children.
• He ended with this prayer: “Let me be born as anything, even a blade of grass in Gokula, so that I may be touched by the dust of the feet of a gopāla, which the Vedas themselves seek and do not find.”

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa accepted the stotra of Brahmā. He gave all the boys and calves back their own forms. They went back to their homes and pens as if nothing unusual had happened, with no memory of the year between. Brahmā walked around Kṛshṇa three times (pradakshiṇā), bowed at his feet, and went to his own realm.

Sources

• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, Chapters 13–14