Dhenuka Vadha

This account from the Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa tells how Kṛshṇa and Balarāma met the terrible donkey-formed asura Dhenuka in the palm forest of Tālavana. Dhenuka was really a dānava named Sāhasika, a son of Bali, who had been given this form by a śāpa (a curse) from Durvāsa.

Kṛshṇa let him remember his true self for a short time, so that he praised Bhagavān Vishṇu’s avatāras in a great stotra (hymn of praise). Then Kṛshṇa veiled his memory again, and the fight ended with the Sudarśana Cakra giving Sāhasika paramoksha. The Purāṇa then tells three connected accounts: Sāhasika and the apsarā Tilottamā on Gandhamādana; Aurva’s daughter Kandalī, who became Durvāsa’s wife and later the banana plant; and Bhagavān Vishṇu appearing as a brahmin child to teach Durvāsa. It ends with Tilottamā’s freedom as Ushā, through her marriage to Aniruddha.

Kṛshṇa and Balarāma in Tālavana

Kṛshṇa, Balarāma and a group of gopas go to Tālavana, the great palm forest at the edge of Bṛndāvana. Ripe tāla fruits hang high on the tall palms. Their smell is rich in the air, and the boys long to taste them.

But the forest is held by an asura, and his presence has made the whole place full of fear. He is Dhenuka, a huge donkey-formed asura of boundless strength. He has the strength of ten million lions, a body like a moving mountain, a mouth as wide as a cave, and a tongue a hundred hands long. Even the devas do not enter this forest while Dhenuka rules it.

Kṛshṇa tells Balarāma to lead the gopas away from the middle of the forest. This fight, he says, is his alone. But he tells the boys they may shake the palm trees and gather the fallen fruit. When the gopas shake the trees, the fruits crash to the ground. The thunder of their fall rolls through the forest, and Dhenuka stirs in his domain.

The fight and the swallowing

Dhenuka comes charging through the forest with the sound and force of an earthquake, his donkey-form moving like a storm. The gopas cry out in fear: “Kṛshṇa! Balarāma! Save us!” Kṛshṇa comes smiling, quite at ease. He tells his frightened friends: “Do not be afraid. This is already decided.”

Dhenuka rushes at Kṛshṇa and swallows him whole. Baka had also swallowed Kṛshṇa in Gokula. But inside Dhenuka’s body Kṛshṇa’s brahma-tejas (divine radiance) blazes, and the whole inside of the asura burns with divine fire. Dhenuka cannot bear the heat, and he spits Kṛshṇa out. Kṛshṇa stands before him, his form shining in the afternoon light.

Pūrva-smṛti and Sāhasika’s stotra

The brightness of Kṛshṇa’s form, and the pure touch of Kṛshṇa’s body inside him, wake Sāhasika’s pūrva-smṛti. This is the memory of his true self and his former lives, which is usually hidden in an asuric birth. Dhenuka stands still in his donkey form, but his mind is changed. Sāhasika the dānava prince remembers who he is and who stands before him.

He sings a stotra of great reach. It praises the main avatāras of Bhagavān Vishṇu, from the earliest descents to the present moment.

• He praises Vāmana, the dwarf brahmin who came to Bali in a small, humble form. When Bali gave him three steps of land, he measured all three worlds in two and a half strides, and Bali’s pride was ended.
• He praises Ādi-Varāha, the first boar. He dived into the cosmic ocean at the start of creation and lifted the earth-devī Bhūdevī on his tusks from the depths where she lay under the water.
• He praises Narasiṃha, the man-lion. He came out of a pillar at Prahlāda’s word and slew Hiraṇyakaśipu at dusk, on a threshold, neither inside nor outside, neither wholly beast nor wholly man, within every condition of the vara (boon) that Hiraṇyakaśipu had won.
• He praises Matsya, the great fish. He kept the Vedas safe and steered Manu’s boat through the flood.
• He praises Kūrma, the divine tortoise. His back became the base for the churning of the cosmic ocean.
• He praises Paraśurāma, who destroyed the kshatriya warrior class twenty-one times because of their adharma. He used his axe as an instrument to set the world right.
• He praises Kapila, the avatāra who set up the Sāṃkhya system. He taught jñāna to his own mother Devahūti, and the teaching set her free.
• He praises Nara-Nārāyaṇa, the twin ṛshis whose shared tapas at Badarikāśrama upholds the world.
• He praises Rāma, who built the Setu across the ocean, gathered the army of vānaras, slew Rāvaṇa and set up dharma-rājya (the rule of dharma).

At last he comes to the present Kṛshṇa avatāra. He praises with special feeling the child who stands before him, seeing that this is the fullest and most personal showing of all that the other avatāras showed only in part. He asks for moksha.

Kṛshṇa’s māyā and the fight goes on

Kṛshṇa is truly pleased with the stotra. But the hour of freedom has not yet come. It is meant to come through the Sudarśana Cakra, and that must be fulfilled. So Kṛshṇa uses his māyā to veil Dhenuka’s newly gained sāttvika awareness. The asura’s pūrva-smṛti is taken away. Sāhasika’s mind falls back into the asuric mode. He no longer sees Bhagavān Kṛshṇa. He sees only a small, weak-looking child, whom he has already swallowed once without success, and whom, in his returned pride, he still thinks he can beat. He begins to shout abuse. He calls Kṛshṇa a mere child, boasts that he cannot be beaten, and says that no weapon and no warrior has ever overcome him.

A long and lively fight follows. Dhenuka lifts Kṛshṇa up and whirls him overhead; Kṛshṇa laughs. He throws Kṛshṇa against the palm trees; Kṛshṇa bounces back unhurt. Balarāma joins in, and his strength is matched against the asura’s in a contest that shakes the forest. Trees fall and the earth is churned up. The gopas watch from a distance, their fear and wonder changing from moment to moment. The fight is long and fierce, and Dhenuka’s great strength makes it hard, though Kṛshṇa cannot be beaten. Dhenuka’s fate needs the meeting to be complete, with his pride fully spent before the last moment.

The Sudarśana Cakra and paramoksha

When the moment comes, Kṛshṇa calls on the Sudarśana Cakra. It has sixteen spokes of blazing divine metal. It spins with the brightness of ten million suns, and when it moves its sound is like the end of time. Kṛshṇa lets it go. The Sudarśana Cakra cuts off Dhenuka’s head in one stroke.

At the instant his head is cut off, a bright tejas, a column of divine light that is Sāhasika’s freed self, rises from the head. It goes straight to Kṛshṇa’s pāda-padmas (lotus feet) and joins them. Sāhasika has reached paramoksha, the highest freedom, just as Durvāsa had ordained when he gave the śāpa in an earlier kalpa.

The devas shower flowers from the sky. The apsarās dance and the gandharvas sing. The gopas and Balarāma praise Kṛshṇa with glad hearts. Then they gather the ripe tāla fruits shaken down in the fight and eat them together in the shade of the palm grove.

The earlier kalpa: Sāhasika, Tilottamā and Durvāsa

How did the dānava prince Sāhasika come to be cursed with a donkey’s form? The Purāṇa now gives the earlier account, set in the Pādma-kalpa.

Sāhasika, son of Bali, is a mighty dānava king who rules from Gandhamādana mountain. The apsarā Tilottamā is one of the foremost celestial dancers, and she is of rare beauty. She is flying through the air on her way to Candra, the deva of the moon, and passes over Gandhamādana. Sāhasika sees her. Tilottamā sees him. Love rises at once in both of them, and Tilottamā stops on her way. The two go down into a cave on Gandhamādana.

They do not know that the ṛshi Durvāsa is in deep dhyāna in the same cave. He sits inside an anthill (puṭṭa), fully withdrawn from all outer sense. The sounds of Sāhasika and Tilottamā’s union reach even into Durvāsa’s samādhi. His eyes open. His furious gaze falls on the pair.

Durvāsa’s anger is sudden and burning. He gives Sāhasika the śāpa: “Become a donkey-formed asura in Bhārata, now!” He gives Tilottamā the śāpa: “Become a dānava woman!” Yet even in his fury, the śāpas carry the seed of freedom. He softens each with a promise. Sāhasika will go to Tālavana in Bṛndāvana, where Kṛshṇa’s Sudarśana Cakra will cut off his head and give him moksha. Tilottamā will be born as the daughter of Bāṇāsura, as Ushā. Aniruddha, the grandson of Kṛshṇa, will take her in his arms in love, make her wholly pure, and bring her back to her apsarā nature.

Durvāsa, Kandalī and the banana plant

Seeing Sāhasika and Tilottamā together had stirred desire even in Durvāsa. This is saṃsargika-dosha, the harm that comes from being near such a scene, even for an ascetic. In this state, Aurva Muni comes to Durvāsa’s āśrama with his daughter Kandalī.

Kandalī is Aurva’s daughter in an unusual way. She was born from Aurva’s knee, not by an ordinary birth. Yet she has every quality of an accomplished woman: beauty, mind and Vedic learning. She has wished for Durvāsa as her husband, and her father brings her to him for that purpose.

Aurva is honest with Durvāsa. He names Kandalī’s one fault. She tends to speak harshly, a sharpness of tongue that comes on her without her will. Durvāsa agrees to marry her on one condition: he will bear up to one hundred harsh words without cursing her. The wedding is held and they live together. Every day Kandalī’s tongue gives out some cutting word, and every day Durvāsa counts and bears it.

At last the hundredth harsh word is reached, and passed. Durvāsa’s patience snaps like an overstretched rope. He gives the hardest śāpa he has: “Become ash!” Kandalī is turned to ash at once. Her jīva (individual self) rises from the ash and speaks from the air. With dignity it asks for forgiveness, and asks what its future will be.

Vishṇu as the brahmin child

At this moment of great crisis, with Kandalī turned to ash and Durvāsa’s guilt and grief meeting his anger, a brahmin child appears. He is small, radiant and calm. He sits before Durvāsa and begins to speak. The ṛshi, in spite of himself, listens.

The child’s teaching is about the nature of māyā: “The woman you saw and loved was māyā, the creative illusion of Bhagavān Vishṇu. She was never ultimately real in the way you attached yourself to her. Your grief is real, but what you grieve for is an illusion. Even your marriage, your life together, her sharp words, your counting, all of this was māyā teaching you something about attachment and patience. In another kalpa the true māyā, the real feminine śakti, will come to you as a wife, and that union will be pure and whole.”

Then the child turns to Kandalī’s jīva and says: “You will become the kadalī plant, the banana tree, on earth. You will be honoured and used in all sacred ceremonies as a pure offering. In another time, in another form, you will be set free.”

The brahmin child is Bhagavān Vishṇu himself in this form, the Ādi-Purusha who appears in many forms wherever wisdom is most needed. Kandalī’s jīva comes down and becomes the kadalī (banana) plant, which from that time is held sacred in ritual. Durvāsa, humbled and sobered, receives the teaching and is changed.

Tilottamā is freed as Ushā

The account now returns to Tilottamā. As Durvāsa had promised, she is born as Ushā, the daughter of the thousand-armed dānava king Bāṇāsura. Aniruddha, Kṛshṇa’s grandson and the son of Pradyumna, comes into her life as such love comes: first in a dream, then in fact. Their union brings on the great war between Kṛshṇa and Bāṇāsura, which the Purāṇa tells elsewhere. Yet that union is itself the means of Tilottamā’s cleansing. By the embrace of Kṛshṇa’s own line, the stain that Durvāsa’s śāpa had put on her is wholly taken away. At the right time Tilottamā returns to her own apsarā form and her celestial home, and her round of descent and release is complete.

Sources

• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 22 (Dhenuka in Tālavana, the swallowing, Sāhasika’s stotra, the Sudarśana Cakra)
• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 23 (Sāhasika, Tilottamā and the śāpa of Durvāsa)
• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 24 (Kandalī, the brahmin child, Ushā)