Pūtanā Vadha and Moksha

Pūtanā was a powerful rākshasī whom King Kaṃsa sent to kill the infant Kṛshṇa. She came to Gokula disguised as a beautiful woman and offered the child her breast, which was full of poison. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa drank out her very life, and she fell dead in her huge true form. Because he took her as a nursing mother, she was freed. The Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa tells this in the 6th chapter of the 10th Skanda. The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa adds the protective kavaca (armour of names) that Nanda spoke over the child.

Kaṃsa’s plan and Pūtanā’s task

Yogamāyā had declared that Kṛshṇa had already been born elsewhere. After this, Kaṃsa called together his ministers, among them Pralamba, Baka, Cāṇūra and Tṛṇāvarta. He ordered them to search for any infant who might be the child foretold to kill him, and to destroy him.

Pūtanā was well suited to this work. She was a rākshasī who could move through the sky at will and take the form of any woman she chose. She had one special power: the milk in her breasts was a deadly poison, and any infant who drank at her breast would die at once.

Pūtanā took the form of a woman of rare beauty, radiant and gentle, dressed as a respectable brāhmaṇī (a brāhmaṇa woman). In this form she entered Gokula. She went through the streets looking kind and motherly, and no one suspected her. She came to Nanda’s house, where the infant Kṛshṇa lay in the inner room.

Source: Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, Chapter 6.

The meeting

Yaśodā and the gopīs saw this finely dressed woman coming towards the child with what looked like love, and they did not stop her. Pūtanā took the infant Kṛshṇa on her lap and gave him her poisoned breast.

But Kṛshṇa is Parāt-para Brahman, and his full knowledge was at work even in an infant’s body. He knew at once who she was and what she meant to do. He closed his eyes and began to suck. What he drew from her breast was more than milk. He drew out her prāṇa (life-breath) itself. Together with the milk, the infant Kṛshṇa took the very life-force that kept Pūtanā alive.

The Bhāgavata describes what she felt. She felt her life being pulled out by the force of his sucking, and the pain became more than she could bear. She cried out, “Let go! Let go!” and her lovely disguise fell away. Her true form burst out in the room, a huge rākshasī with a vast body and a terrible look. As her strength gave out she fell backwards. Her great body struck the ground so hard that the earth shook, and trees within several krośas (a measure of distance) were torn up by the blow. The people of the nearby settlements heard the crash and came running.

They found the infant Kṛshṇa sitting calmly on Pūtanā’s chest, playing as if none of it had troubled him.

Source: Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, Chapter 6.

The gopīs’ rakshā rites

Yaśodā and the gopīs were glad that the child was safe, but they were badly frightened by what had happened. They did rakshā (protection) rites over the infant. This is a notable passage in the Bhāgavata. They used the names of Vishṇu and the usual gopa-rakshā (protection of the cowherds) formulas.

The gopīs sprinkled the child with water from the Yamunā and with a paste of cow-dung. They rubbed dust from the cow-pen on his body. They chanted the names of Bhagavān Vishṇu: Vāsudeva, Saṃkarshaṇa, Pradyumna and Aniruddha. They prayed: “May Vishṇu protect your eyes. May Janārdana protect your prāṇa. May Mādhava protect your ātmā. May Cakrī protect your limbs.” Then Yaśodā took the child on her own lap and nursed him. She did the usual birth-protection rites once more, as though he had been born again in safety.

Source: Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, Chapter 6.

The moksha of Pūtanā

The gopas looked at Pūtanā’s fallen body. It was so huge that it had to be cut into pieces and carried out of the settlement to be burned. The Bhāgavata records that when her body was burned, the smoke that rose from it smelled sweet, like agaru (aloe-wood). The body that Kṛshṇa’s lips had touched was already made pure.

Pūtanā’s jīva (her ātmā) reached the same moksha as a close foster-mother, a dhātrī, of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa. The Bhāgavata gives this teaching through Śuka Mahārshi. Even one who came to Bhagavān Kṛshṇa meaning to kill him, but who gave him milk from her own body, even though that milk was poisoned, was received by him as a nursing mother. Kṛshṇa had drunk from her breast and counted her as a mātā (mother). By the great power of this touch of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa, all her karma was dissolved. She was given svarga-gati (the way to svarga), and by Bhagavān Kṛshṇa’s mercy, moksha beyond svarga.

The Bhāgavata draws this plain lesson. If even Pūtanā, who came with murder in her mind, was freed by Bhagavān Kṛshṇa through this touch, how much more surely will those be freed who come to him in love and devotion, as a parent, a friend, a servant or a lover?

Source: Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, Chapter 6.

The Vishṇu Purāṇa account: Nanda’s kavaca

The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, in the Fifth Aṃśa (Pañcamāṃśa), Chapter 5, keeps one more event in the Pūtanā episode. After Pūtanā died and her body was burned, Nanda spoke a full mantra-kavaca (armour of sacred names) over the infant Kṛshṇa. The kavaca called on each of the great avatāra names of Bhagavān Vishṇu to guard particular limbs and functions of Kṛshṇa’s body.

• Matsya (the Fish): protect the waters and the vital energies.
• Varāha (the Boar): protect the link with the earth and the foundations.
• Narasiṃha (the Man-Lion): protect from all attacks by rākshasas.
• Vāmana (the Dwarf): protect the three realms of his being.
• Govinda: protect the cattle, the senses and the identity of the cowherd.
• Keśava: protect the hair, the limbs and the divine beauty.
• Nārāyaṇa: protect the ātmā, the prāṇa and the supreme consciousness.

The Vishṇu Purāṇa gives this kavaca as Nanda’s real act of fatherly care. It was spoken as a loving act and not as an empty rite. Nanda did not fully understand that the child he was guarding was the very Bhagavān Vishṇu whose names he was calling on for protection.

Source: Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Pañcamāṃśa, Chapter 5.

Sources

• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, Chapter 6
• Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Pañcamāṃśa, Chapter 5