Gajendra Upākhyāna

The Gajendra Upākhyāna is the full account of a great elephant king. A powerful crocodile seized him in the sacred Ṛtumat lake, on the slopes of Trikūṭa mountain. After a thousand years of struggle, Gajendra gave up all hope in worldly help. He called to Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa with a lotus in his raised trunk and a deep stotra (hymn of praise) of the ātmā (the self) on his lips. Bhagavān Śrī Hari came at once on Garuḍa. He split the crocodile’s mouth with his Sudarśana cakra and freed Gajendra. He gave Gajendra not only rescue from the body’s danger but final moksha (liberation).

The crocodile was Hūhū, a gandharva freed from a ṛshi’s śāpa (curse). Gajendra was King Indradyumna of the Pāṇḍya line, who had been born as an elephant through the śāpa of Agastya. The events took place in the 4th (Tāmasa) Manvantara. The Hari who came down was an avatāra born in that manvantara as the son of Harimedhas and Hariṇī.

Trikūṭa and Ṛtumat

The events happen in a place of unmatched beauty. Trikūṭa was a great mountain, ten thousand yojanas high and as wide around. The milk ocean surrounded it on every side. Its three peaks were of silver, iron and gold. Their light lit the directions, the sea and the sky. The other peaks were set with gems and ores of many colours, and thick with trees, creepers and shrubs. Birdsong and the sound of mountain streams filled all the directions.

On the slopes of Trikūṭa lay the famous garden of Varuṇa, called Ṛtumat, “full of the seasons”. Divine flowers and trees with celestial fruit bloomed there in all seasons at once. The devastrīs (women of the devas) played there. The garden held every beautiful tree: mandāra, pārijāta, aśoka, champaka, several kinds of mango, grape, jackfruit, coconut, date, and dozens more.

In the middle of Ṛtumat lay a vast lake. Golden lotuses blazed there. White water-lilies, blue night-lotuses and red lotuses made it brilliant. Haṃsas (swans), kāraṇḍava birds and koyals filled it with sound. Fish and turtles moved through its water and scattered the pollen of the flowers. The breeze from the lake, carrying the scent of lotus pollen, could be known from far away.

Gajendra in his glory

In this forest lived a magnificent elephant king, Gajendra, the unchallenged ruler of his region. When he walked through the forest with his herd of female elephants and young ones, his very smell made lions, tigers, other elephants, rhinoceroses, great serpents and all fierce animals flee in fear. Wolves, boars, buffaloes, bears, porcupines, monkeys, deer and rabbits lived under his protection and moved carefully at a distance.

His herd pressed round him as he walked. The ground shook under his weight. Drunk bees circled his temples, which were wet with rut. His eyes were half shut with rut. The summer sun had heated him and he burned with thirst. From far away he smelled the scent of lotus pollen carried on the breeze from the Ṛtumat lake. He hurried to its shore.

The crocodile seizes Gajendra

Gajendra entered the lake and drank deeply of its clear, lotus-scented water. He bathed himself and his herd with great joy. Like a householder, he felt great love for his young ones and his female companions. He drew up water with his trunk and sprinkled them, and refreshed them fully. He did not see the danger gathering under the surface. It came through daiva, the unseen will of the divine.

A powerful crocodile, driven by daiva, seized Gajendra’s leg in its jaws and began to drag him down. The elephant was mighty, but his strength was on land. In the water, the crocodile’s home, the balance turned completely. Gajendra thrashed, pulled and trumpeted to his herd. The female elephants cried out in distress. The male elephants pulled him back from behind. Nothing helped. The crocodile’s grip did not loosen.

A vast time passed, one thousand years, in this useless struggle. All that time Gajendra’s strength of body, the force of his senses and his bodily energy grew less and less. The Bhāgavatam points out the opposite in the crocodile. In the water, all three grew stronger in the crocodile as they weakened in the elephant.

Gajendra’s realisation

When his strength had almost failed, Gajendra saw clearly what to do. He thought: “Elephants as strong as I am could not free me. How could the female elephants? The noose of Brahmā’s Mṛtyu, the rope of death, has come to me in the form of this crocodile. I am only a paśu, an animal. Even so, I will surrender to Parameśvara. Īśvara alone is the one worthy refuge (āśraya).”

He thought further: “The terrible serpent that is powerful Mṛtyu runs at great speed in every direction. Whoever, in fear of it, takes refuge in Parameśvara, whoever he may be, that Sarveśvara protects him. Mṛtyu works among the creatures for ever out of fear of that very Deva. We surrender to that Deva.”

The Gajendra stotra

With this resolve, Gajendra steadied his mind and drew all his awareness into the heart. He began to recite a stotra that he had learned in a former birth. It was not the plea of a clever philosopher or a trained yogī. It was the deep cry of a being stripped of every worldly support, calling to the highest reality.

The stotra is a long meditation on the nature of Parameśvara. He has no beginning and no cause. He is beyond cause and effect (kārya and kāraṇa), beyond all guṇas, and beyond space and time. Some of its main lines are these:

• “Oṃ. To that Bhagavān Parameśvara, who is full (pūrṇa), the cause of the whole world and the master of all, whose touch gives life to this world of beings, we offer namaskāra.”
• “This world rises from Īśvara, rests in Īśvara and melts into Īśvara. Īśvara himself is this world, yet he is beyond it and beyond māyā-śakti, which is its material cause. We surrender to that self-established form.”
• “The ṛshis who seek moksha give up their attachment to saṃsāra, practise compassion, see all beings as the ātman, and live in forests in constant tapas, seeking that Parameśvara. He is my only way.”
• “Neither deva, nor asura, nor human, nor animal, nor bird, nor woman, nor man, nor neuter, nor any guṇa, nor karma, nor its fruit: none of these is Īśvara. What remains when all is set aside, what holds all within itself, that pure cit-tattva (the principle of awareness) is Īśvara. May that Īśvara show himself!”
• “I do not wish to live. What use is the life of an elephant, without viveka (discernment) inside or out? I wish for the end of ajñāna (ignorance), which covers the light of the ātman. That end does not come by itself with time. Nor does moksha ever perish with time.”
• “O Deva! I surrender to that Īśvara who is the highest aim of the jīva, whose body is this world yet who stays apart from it, to whom the world is his wealth and the place of his līlā (play), whose ātman is the being and the shining of the world.”

The Bhāgavatam adds a striking point. Brahmā and the other devas each had their own form and identity, their own dehābhimāna (sense of being the body). So they could not go to Gajendra’s aid. But Śrī Hari has no particular form that limits him. He is the ātman of all things and the true form of all devas. He appeared at once.

Bhagavān Hari’s arrival and the freeing

Bhagavān Śrī Hari, the support of this world, heard both Gajendra’s cry of distress and his stotra. He mounted Garuḍa and took the Sudarśana cakra in his hand. He came down to the lake with the speed that fits his coming whenever a true śaraṇāgata (one who has surrendered) calls. The devas gathered round him and praised him as he came.

Gajendra was still being dragged down by the crocodile in the depths. He saw Śrī Hari in the sky, riding Garuḍa with the Sudarśana in his hand. With the last of his strength he raised his trunk above the water. In his trunk he held a lotus flower. He called out:

Nārāyaṇa! Tvaṃ jagataḥ sarvasya pitā. Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, namostute.

“O Nārāyaṇa! You are the father of the whole world. Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, I bow to you.”

Bhagavān Hari, birthless and eternal, saw Gajendra’s pain and came down at great speed. At once he pulled both Gajendra and the crocodile out of the water with great force. With the Sudarśana cakra he split the crocodile’s mouth and freed Gajendra’s leg. The devas who had gathered watched this in wonder.

Liberation and what was revealed

The moment Bhagavān Hari’s touch reached Gajendra, the knot of ajñāna-bandha (the bond of ignorance) was cut. Gajendra was freed from the tie of thinking himself the body. He took a four-armed divine form dressed in gold, the same as Bhagavān Hari’s own. He had received not only rescue from the body’s danger but moksha itself.

At the same moment the crocodile gave up its form. It was Hūhū, a gandharva of the first rank. The divine ṛshi Devala had cursed him to be born as a crocodile for a past fault. Freed from the śāpa by Bhagavān Hari’s coming, Hūhū bowed down to him and returned to his own world.

Gajendra was Indradyumna, the famous king of the Pāṇḍya line in the Draviḍa country, who was firmly established in devotion to Vishṇu. He had taken a vow of silence (maunavrata) and was deep in upāsanā (devoted meditation) when the great ṛshi Agastya came with his group of disciples. The king was absorbed in the ārādhana of Śrī Hari and bound by his vow of silence. He could not rise to offer water of welcome (arghya) or words of greeting. Agastya took this as great disrespect and spoke the śāpa:

“This dull-witted man, whose mind is as slow as an elephant’s, let him become an elephant and enter the thick darkness of ajñāna.”

The king accepted the śāpa as the order of Īśvara. In his animal birth as Gajendra he had lost his human powers. But what remained in him from a whole life of Śrī Hari-arcana (ritual worship) was the very thing that made the Hari stotra rise by itself in his mind when his life was in danger. The Bhāgavatam says so plainly: “That he remembered the Hari stotra while an elephant was entirely the result of the Hari-arcana he had done in his previous birth.”

Brahmā, Rudra and the devas showered flowers. Gandharvas sang. The celestial drums (devadundubhis) sounded.

Bhagavān Hari’s parting teaching

Bhagavān Hari is the one who dwells in all beings. He spoke to all who were gathered there: the freed Gajendra, the freed Hūhū and the devas. He told of the greatness of this stotra.

Some people rise at dawn in purity and meditate on Bhagavān Hari and on the holy places and beings that belong to this account. These are Trikūṭa, Ṛtumat, Brahmaloka, Śivaloka, Vaikuṇṭha, Śvetadvīpa, Garuḍa, Śesha, Lakshmī, Brahmā, Nārada, Śiva, Prahlāda, Dhruva and the great ṛshis. They gain the fruit of endless puṇya (merit). Those who recite the Gajendra stotra in the morning will have, at the hour of death, the clear and pure buddhi (understanding) that destroys ajñāna.

Then Bhagavān Hari gave Gajendra a place among his own attendants. He mounted Garuḍa and went back to his holy home. Gandharvas, siddhas and devas praised him all the way.

The Manvantara

The Bhāgavatam says that this event took place in the 4th Manvantara, the Tāmasa Manvantara. In that manvantara the avatāra named Hari was born to Harimedhas and Hariṇī to protect dharma. It was this same Hari who came down to free Gajendra. The 8th Skanda gives this account as the proof of śaraṇāgati. Bhagavān Hari’s grace (anugraha) answers the fullness and honesty of surrender, and not the qualifications of the jīva.

Sources

• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 8th Skanda, Chapter 1
• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 8th Skanda, Chapters 2–4