Nṛga Moksha (Bhāgavata Purāṇa)

This account tells how Bhagavān Kṛshṇa freed King Nṛga from a lizard’s body. Young Yādavas playing in the gardens of Dvārakā found a huge lizard in a dry well. They could not lift it out. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa lifted it with his left hand. At his touch it became a radiant being, the old king Nṛga of the Ikshvāku line. Nṛga told how a mistake over a brāhmaṇa’s cow had brought him this birth. Then Bhagavān Kṛshṇa taught the Yādavas how grave it is to take a brāhmaṇa’s property. The Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa tells this in its 10th Skanda, Chapter 64.

The lizard in the well

One day Sāmba, Pradyumna, Cārubhānu, Gada, Aniruddha and other Yādava youths went to the pleasure gardens of Dvārakā. They grew thirsty and looked for water. They found a strange creature at the bottom of a dry well, a lizard as big as a mountain.

They felt pity for it and tried to pull it out with ropes of leather and hemp. They failed completely. They went to Bhagavān Kṛshṇa and told him of the wonder.

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa came and lifted the lizard out with his left hand, with no effort. The moment his hand touched it, the lizard gave up its form. It became a radiant being with a shining crown, bright clothes and garlands, and the bearing of a divine king.

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa knew everything, but he asked so that the matter would be made known. He said: “Who are you, O being of fair form? You seem to be of the highest order. By what karma did you come to this birth?”

Nṛga speaks

First Nṛga placed his shining crown at the feet of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa. Then he answered:

“O Bhagavān Kṛshṇa, I am Nṛga, son of Ikshvāku, a king of old. Surely you have heard of me among the great givers. I gave cows as many as the grains of sand on the earth, the stars in the sky and the drops of rain. Their horns were tipped with gold and their hooves covered with silver, and they were decked with cloth and garlands. I gave them to young brāhmaṇas of good families, poor but virtuous and devoted to the Vedas.”

“One of my cows once strayed and mixed with my herd. I did not know that it belonged to another brāhmaṇa, and I gave it to a worthy brāhmaṇa. The first owner saw the new owner leading it away and claimed it back. A quarrel began, and each of them stood before me and said the cow was his. I begged both to let me make it right. I offered a hundred thousand cows in its place. But the first owner said he would not take any number of cows, and he went away. The second brāhmaṇa also refused. My life ended with this matter unsettled.”

“Yama asked me whether I would take my pāpa (sin) first or my puṇya (merit) first. I chose to take the pāpa first. As I fell from his court, I knew that I was entering the body of a lizard.”

“O Govinda, O Prabhu Kṛshṇa, even now my memory of my past lives has not left me. I have been waiting here. At last your hand has touched me and I am free. Give me leave to go, O Nārāyaṇa. Wherever I go, may my mind rest always at your lotus feet.”

Nṛga goes

Nṛga walked around Bhagavān Kṛshṇa, touched his feet with his crown, and received leave to go. Then, before the eyes of all, he climbed into a divine vehicle. The people of Dvārakā watched in wonder.

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa’s teaching on a brāhmaṇa’s property

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa is deeply devoted to brāhmaṇas. He used this moment to instruct the Yādavas who had gathered. He said:

“Even fire, the fierce digestive power of serpents, and kings cannot easily digest a brāhmaṇa’s property. It is not poison, because poison kills only the one who takes it, and water can put out fire. But the fire that rises from a brāhmaṇa’s belongings cannot be approached. It destroys a family at its roots.”

“Whoever takes a brāhmaṇa’s property, even property that someone else gave earlier, will perish, together with his own generations and three generations before and after. If it is taken by force, twenty generations in both directions are destroyed.”

“Foolish kings, blinded by royal wealth, think a brāhmaṇa’s property is a gain. They do not see that they are falling. A brāhmaṇa laments when his living is taken from his household. For as many grains of dust as his tears wet, so many hundreds of years those kings burn in the narakas (hells). A man who takes back a gift he has given stays sixty thousand years in naraka as a worm in filth.”

“I bow three times a day, with a focused mind, to the brāhmaṇas who know the Veda. Do the same. Whoever does not bow to them will face my reproof.”

Sources

• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, Chapter 64