Viprapatnī Moksha

While Kṛshṇa and his young companions grazed the calves near Madhuvana, they grew hungry. Kṛshṇa sent the boys to some brāhmaṇas who were doing a yajña nearby. The brāhmaṇas, wrapped up in their rites, took no notice of the divine boy. Kṛshṇa then sent the boys to the brāhmaṇas’ wives. The wives knew him at once and hurried to him with food. They saw him under a banyan tree, praised him in a deep stotra, and asked not for food but for freedom. A golden chariot came down from Goloka and took the real wives away. Kṛshṇa made chāyā (shadow) forms of them to go back to their husbands. The account also tells of the old śāpa of Āṅgirasa that had brought these celestial women into the bodies of brāhmaṇa women in Bhārata. It is told in Chapter 18 of the Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa of the Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa.

Āṅgirasa’s old śāpa and the celestial wives

The brāhmaṇa wives in this account are not ordinary women. They are the eternal wives of the Saptarshis, the Seven ṛshis. They are beings of great radiance and spiritual power who live in the celestial realms.

Long before, the ṛshis were doing a great yajña. Agni, the deva of fire and the very means of the yajña, saw the great beauty of the ṛshis’ wives and was struck by desire. Though he was a deva, his mind was disturbed by kāma (desire). The ṛshi Āṅgirasa saw all secrets with his inner sight, and he saw Agni’s troubled mind at that very moment. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

Āṅgirasa first gave a śāpa (a curse) to Agni: “Because you let your mind be taken by desire in the holy place of the yajña, from now on you shall eat everything without choice. You shall eat all that is put before you.” This is why fire, as we know it, burns everything it touches.

Then Āṅgirasa turned to the wives. They were wholly without blame, for Agni’s troubled gaze had fallen on them without their knowledge or wish. But the ṛshi said that the very fact of being the unwilling object of such desire had left a fine stain, which must be cleansed by birth in the world of mortals. He gave them a śāpa to be born as brāhmaṇa women in Bhārata. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

But Āṅgirasa’s śāpa held the seed of the highest grace. He said that their chāyā-forms, their shadow selves, would stay behind with their husbands the ṛshis, so that the ṛshis’ tapas (austerity) and household dharma would not be disturbed. And he promised that when Kṛshṇa himself came down to Bhārata, these women would see him face to face. By that darśana (sight) their śāpa would end, their true forms would be restored, and they would rise to Goloka, the divine realm beyond even the celestial planes. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

Kṛshṇa sends the boys to the brāhmaṇas

In the new city of Vṛndāvana, Kṛshṇa and a group of young gopas took the calves to graze in the meadows near Madhuvana. The hours passed, the sun climbed high, and the boys grew hungry.

Close by, a group of brāhmaṇas of the Āṅgirasa line were performing a yajña with the full Vedic rite. The fire blazed, offerings were poured, and mantras were chanted in exact measure. Kṛshṇa sent the boys to these priests with a polite request: “Please give us some food. We are hungry, and the yajña you are doing is for Kṛshṇa’s pleasure. It is right that Kṛshṇa’s companions be fed.” (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

The priests did not even look up from their rite. They were taken up with the mechanical working of the ritual: keeping the fire, measuring the ghee, and saying each mantra in its right pitch and rhythm. They treated the boys with complete indifference, as if children of the gopa community were beneath their notice. The boys went back to Kṛshṇa with empty hands, ashamed and hungry. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

The wives answer with their whole being

Kṛshṇa then told the boys to go to the wives of those same brāhmaṇas, who were looking after the household beside the yajña place. The boys gave the message that Kṛshṇa and Balarāma were hungry and wanted food. At that moment the wives’ whole being was set alight with devotion.

They did not stop to think. They did not think of what their husbands might say, or whether it was proper, or what the neighbours would think. At once they began to gather food into every vessel the house had. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

The feast they brought together was rich in love and in kinds of food. There was cooked rice, pāyasam (sweet milk-rice) scented with cardamom, many vegetables and curries, fresh curds and various sweets. These were carried in vessels of silver, bronze and gold, each woman bringing what she could. They went in a group along the forest paths towards Madhuvana, their hearts running ahead of their feet. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

Darśana under the banyan tree

The brāhmaṇa wives found Kṛshṇa sitting under a great banyan tree at the edge of Madhuvana, with Balarāma beside him. What they saw took their breath away.

Kṛshṇa shone. His dark form glowed with a light that seemed to come from within. He wore yellow silk (pītāmbara) that caught the dappled light of the forest, a necklace of gems and a garland of forest flowers. His dark curling hair was crowned with peacock feathers, and his eyes were wide and bright like two lotuses in full bloom. Balarāma stood beside him, fair as the full moon, dressed in blue, as radiant as Kṛshṇa but in a different kind of beauty. Kṛshṇa among his companions was like the full moon rising among a field of stars. All else faded as the eye was drawn to that centre of light. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

The women put down their vessels and stood still, held by the sight. Then, one by one and all together, they began to praise him.

The stotra of the brāhmaṇa wives

The stotra of these women shows deep wisdom. It shows that these wives of the Saptarshis carried their celestial knowledge into their births as brāhmaṇa women. They praised Kṛshṇa as:

The ādi-purusha, the first being, who was there before creation and before the first thought of Brahmā. From his one will the whole universe flows out, and into him it returns. They said that Brahmā, Vishṇu and Maheśvara are all partial forms of his one undivided śakti (power). They said that the Vedas reach towards the truth of his nature but cannot fully hold or describe him. He is always a little beyond the farthest reach of holy speech. They called him the inner witness (sākshin), who watches the jīva (the living being) go through birth, death and rebirth without being touched by any of it. They spoke of his compassion as the reason he came down. He does not need anything from this world, but the world needs him. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

After pouring out this praise, the women fell silent. Then they made their request. They did not ask for wealth, children, long life or even enjoyment in svarga (heaven). They asked for dāsya, the state of being Kṛshṇa’s servants, and for firm, steady bhakti (devotion) that would never leave their minds in all their future lives. They asked that they not be sent back to their homes. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

Kṛshṇa’s grace and the rise to Goloka

Kṛshṇa heard the stotra and the request. He smiled, the smile that holds all worlds. He said only one word, “sare“, meaning “so be it”. With that one word their freedom was granted.

At once a golden chariot came down from the sky. Kṛshṇa’s pārshadas (divine attendants) came out of it from Goloka and received the brāhmaṇa wives with honour. The women stepped into the chariot without a glance behind. Their faces shone with the dawn of the knowledge they had sought through many births. The chariot rose. The real brāhmaṇa wives, who had always been the wives of the Saptarshis in their true nature, had gone back to Goloka. The course that Āṅgirasa’s śāpa had begun was now complete. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

But Kṛshṇa did not leave disorder in the world of mortals. He made chāyā-forms, shadow copies of each woman, the same in looks and manner, and sent them back to the brāhmaṇas’ household. These shadow wives would live out the rest of their ordained human lives, keeping the household and the outward form of the marriage, while the real women rested in Goloka. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

What the brāhmaṇas learned

When the yajña ended, the brāhmaṇa priests went home looking for their wives. They found women who looked and spoke exactly as their wives had always done. The husbands returned, the shadow wives received them, and life went on.

But on the path between the yajña place and the house, the brāhmaṇas came to understand what had happened. They learned that their wives had gone to Kṛshṇa, that Kṛshṇa himself had come to Madhuvana, and that his companions had come to the priests first and been turned away. The weight of what they had missed fell on them. While they were taken up with the exact correctness of their yajña, Bhagavān Kṛshṇa, the very aim of all yajña, had come to their door, and they had been blind to him. Their wives had no ritual training and no argument to offer. They had simply answered with love, and they were freed. (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18)

Sources

• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 18