Kṛshṇa Mahāprasthāna

The Bhāgavata and Vishṇu Purāṇas tell how Bhagavān Kṛshṇa left the earth. When the Yādavas had destroyed one another at Prabhāsa, Kṛshṇa sat alone under a pippala tree on the western shore. A hunter named Jarā wounded his foot by mistake. Kṛshṇa forgave him and sent him to svarga. Then, before Brahmā, Śiva, Indra and the other devas, Kṛshṇa drew his ātmā (self) out of his human body by yoga, entered his own dhāma (supreme abode), and left this world, as lightning leaves a cloud and as an actor leaves the stage. The ocean covered Dvārakā, and Arjuna led the survivors to Indraprastha.

Kṛshṇa under the pippala tree

The war among the Yādavas at Prabhāsa had finished the last of them, and Balarāma had gone by yoga. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa went to a quiet place under a great pippala tree near the shore of the western ocean.

He sat in perfect stillness with his right foot on his left thigh, the pose of a yogī at rest. His body shone with its own divine light. He wore yellow-gold silk. His four arms held the śaṅkha (conch), the cakra (discus), the gadā (mace) and the padma (lotus), the emblems that had been with him through all the works of his avatāra. His dark form, lit from within, was like a rain cloud lit by lightning. The Kaustubha gem shone on his chest, the Śrīvatsa mark showed, and the Vanamālā garland hung from his neck.

His face was perfectly calm. A soft smile played at the corner of his lips. It was the same smile he had worn in Devakī’s prison, in the fields of Vṛndāvana, at Kurukshetra and in the courts of Dvārakā: the smile of the one who is always free.

Jarā the hunter

A hunter named Jarā moved in that same forest. He was a skilled maker of arrows and made his arrowheads from scrap iron. One of his pieces of iron was a piece of the very musala (iron club) whose powder the Yādavas had thrown into the sea after the śāpa (curse) of the brāhmaṇas. A fish had swallowed that iron. The fish was caught, the iron was taken out, and it came into Jarā’s hands. He made it into an arrowhead.

From far off, through the trees, Jarā saw what looked like the face of a deer, a red curved shape, perhaps a snout. It was the lotus-red foot of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa, raised and resting on his thigh. Jarā drew his bow and loosed the arrow. The arrow struck the foot of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa.

Jarā came forward to take his kill. He found instead a man of divine beauty sitting quietly with an arrow in his foot. He saw the four arms and the divine emblems. He knew what he had done, and terror threw him to the ground.

Kṛshṇa’s forgiveness

Jarā lay face down, shaking.

“Mahātman, I did not know. I saw what looked like a deer. I am of low birth and full of pāpa (sin). I have struck a mahātmā (great soul). How can I make this right? You alone protect those who come to you. Destroy me quickly, so that I may not do such an offence against the great again.”

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa looked on him with full compassion. He had arranged all this from within, and he knew that Jarā was playing a part in finishing the avatāra.

“Rise. Do not be afraid. It is I who arranged this through my own māyā. You have done no pāpa. Go now to svarga. You have earned it.”

Jarā walked three times around Bhagavān Kṛshṇa in pradakshiṇa (a respectful circling), bowed to the ground again, and rose. A divine vehicle appeared and carried him up.

The devas arrive

Then the worlds of the devas answered. Brahmā came and Śiva came. Indra, Agni and Varuṇa came, and the Prajāpatis, and great ṛshis, and Gandharvas, Siddhas and Cāraṇas. They gathered in the sky above the pippala tree. Flowers fell like rain and divine drums sounded. All had come to see the departure of the Supreme Bhagavān Kṛshṇa from his human form.

They sang his praises and told the deeds of his avatāra: his birth in Devakī’s prison, his childhood in Vṛndāvana, the Rāsa Līlā, the defeat of Kaṃsa, the war at Kurukshetra, the destruction of every enemy of dharma, and now the last act, the drawing back of his human form from the earth.

Kṛshṇa’s withdrawal

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa did not simply let the body die. He drew it back, by his own will, through the yoga of fire.

He closed his lotus eyes. He gathered all his prāṇas (life-breaths) and sent them upward through the sushumnā (the central channel). He rested his mind in the ātmā, his own supreme, unborn self. Then, by a yoga of fire known to the highest yogīs, he dissolved the body from within. No flame showed outside, but the body was burned from inside by the fire of pure awareness.

Brahmā, Śiva and the gathered devas, who were watching, saw the shining divine form go to his own dhāma. Then the light was gone. The pippala tree stood and the shore was quiet.

Brahmā, standing in the sky, was amazed. He said to the others:

“Wonderful! We could not trace his path. He entered his dhāma as lightning leaves a cloud. No path could be seen. He was here, and then he was in his own highest state, as if there were no distance between the two.”

All the devas bowed to the empty place under the pippala tree. It was now as holy as any of the great temples of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa.

Dāruka’s report and the grief at Dvārakā

Dāruka the charioteer had been searching for Bhagavān Kṛshṇa. He reached the place after the departure. He saw the tree, the marks on the ground and the scent of tulasī still in the air, and he understood. He went back to Dvārakā.

There, weeping before Vasudeva and Ugrasena, he told them everything: the end of the Yādavas, the departure of Balarāma and the departure of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa. The city fell into grief. Vasudeva was overcome and left his body. Devakī and Rohiṇī, who could not live after the going of their sons, also left. Ugrasena and the other elders followed.

The queens, Rukmiṇī, Satyabhāmā, Jāmbavatī and the others, chose the fire. Each held her husband in her heart and entered the flames in perfect calm.

Arjuna’s lost strength

Arjuna came from Indraprastha. He felt an emptiness in himself that at first he could not name. When he reached Dvārakā and saw the ruin, he understood. He performed all the funeral rites and gathered the survivors.

He led the column north, and a band of robbers attacked it. Arjuna reached for his bow and called the divine weapons, and they did not come. The divine strength in his arms was gone. He fought with ordinary skill and could not stop some of the women from being carried off.

Afterward he sat in grief and understood. All the strength he had ever used, at Kurukshetra, in every great battle, in every contest and on every tīrtha-yātrā (pilgrimage), had never been his own. It had flowed through him from Kṛshṇa. Kṛshṇa had been his ātmā, his wisdom and his strength. Without Kṛshṇa he was a man of ordinary ability.

This understanding came through loss. It finished what the Bhagavad Gītā had begun in words, for now he had lived its truth.

Dvārakā goes under the sea

As the last of the survivors left under Arjuna’s care, the western ocean took back the city of Dvārakā. Every tower, garden and palace was covered by the sea. Only the holy place where Bhagavān Kṛshṇa himself had lived and walked was kept above the water, a place of pilgrimage for all time.

The Bhāgavata says:

Wherever Bhagavān Kṛshṇa sets his feet even once, that place is made pure for ever. His presence is never taken away from the place he made holy with his body.

The teaching of the Mahāprasthāna

Śuka Maharshi gave the last summary to Parīkshit.

“Bhagavān Kṛshṇa is the paramātmā (supreme self) himself. He does not die. His birth and death are exactly what they seem to the devotee: a play, a showing of the forms of this world, to draw all beings toward moksha. He came to the earth freely and showed the whole range of human life: birth, childhood, love, war, loss and old age. Then he withdrew. By this showing, every part of dharma was lit and every part of adharma was burned away.”

“Whoever rises at dawn and meditates with love and devotion on this mahāprasthāna-līlā (the play of the great departure) of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa will reach the same path, the path to his own dhāma, from which there is no return.”

The Vishṇu Purāṇa account

The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Pañcamāṃśa, Chapter 37, gives three more details of the departure.

Balarāma’s mahānirvāṇa and the serpent

The Vishṇu Purāṇa tells Balarāma’s departure in a fuller form than the Bhāgavata. Balarāma sat in a yoga pose on the shore at Prabhāsa and withdrew. A great white serpent came out of his mouth. This was Ādiśesha himself, the cosmic serpent of whom Balarāma had been a part (aṃśa) through the whole avatāra. He was leaving the borrowed human body and returning to his eternal form. The serpent was so vast that the devas of the ocean and the nāga kings came to meet it with respect. The white form of Ādiśesha was seen for a moment before it went into the deep. This showed all who were present what the Purāṇas had always said: Balarāma was never a human being but the support of all that exists, for a time clothed in a mortal frame.

Kṛshṇa’s last words to Dāruka

Before he left, Kṛshṇa spoke to Dāruka, his charioteer, who had driven his chariot through every great battle and was about to lose his master.

“Go to Dvārakā. Tell Vasudeva, tell my mothers, tell all the Yādava women to go to Indraprastha under Arjuna’s protection. Do not stay in Dvārakā, for the ocean will take it back. And tell Arjuna that his power came from me, and when I am gone that power will return to its source. He should accept this without grief and rule with righteousness until his own time comes.”

Dāruka took these words with tears and left.

Kṛshṇa merges into Vishṇu-tattva

The Vishṇu Purāṇa tells Kṛshṇa’s last departure as his return into his own Vishṇu-tattva (the nature of Vishṇu). It is not a death but a drawing back of the avatāra form into the supreme principle from which it came down. The devas had waited for this moment, knowing that the work of the avatāra was done. As Bhagavān Kṛshṇa went back to his own highest abode, they greeted him with music of the devas, flowers and praise.

Sources

• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 11th Skanda, Chapter 31
• Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Pañcamāṃśa, Chapter 37