Pradyumna and Māyāvatī

The Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, tells how Pradyumna, the son of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa and Rukmiṇī, was stolen by the asura Śambara when he was a newborn child. Pradyumna is an avatāra of Manmatha, the deva of kāma (desire). Māyāvatī, Śambara’s wife, raised him. When he grew up, he slew Śambara and returned to Dvārakā with Māyāvatī.

Birth and abduction

Rukmiṇī, the dear wife of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa, is the very form of Lakshmī among women. She gave birth to Pradyumna. He was the avatāra of Manmatha, the deva of kāma, whom Bhagavān Śiva’s anger had made bodiless (anaṅga). The child was very beautiful and had all the marks of a deva.

On the seventh night after his birth, the asura Śambara stole the infant from the birth chamber and took him to his own city. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa knows all things, yet he did not stop Śambara, because the time of Śambara’s death had been fixed. Rukmiṇī was full of grief for her newborn son. She wept for him through the long years he was away. (Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapter 106)

Māyāvatī knows Pradyumna

Śambara brought the infant home and gave him to his wife Māyāvatī to raise as her son, because she had no child. Māyāvatī was a woman of great beauty. The moment she looked at the child, her body thrilled. By the memory of her past life she knew that he was Manmatha, her husband of a former birth, now born again as Kṛshṇa’s son. She thought: “In his anger Śiva made my husband bodiless. That same one has now taken birth here. How can I nurse him as a mother?”

Still, she raised him. Through a process called rasāyana, she made him grow quickly to young manhood. She taught him all the māyā-vidyās, the arts of illusion and sorcery. He also became skilled in astra-vidyā, the science of divine weapons. As he grew, Māyāvatī remembered their old love and turned to him with desire. (Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapter 106)

The truth is told

Pradyumna was surprised by the way Māyāvatī behaved toward him. He asked her, “You are my mother. Why do you act like this?” She then told him everything. He was the son of Rukmiṇī and Kṛshṇa. Śambara had stolen him as an infant. She herself was Rati, the divine wife of Manmatha. She had been born again as Māyāvatī in Śambara’s house and had been waiting for the day of their reunion. She said she was drawn to him as a wife, not as a mother, because she had never really been his mother.

When Pradyumna heard this, his righteous anger turned against Śambara. He faced the asura and charged him with stealing Kṛshṇa’s son. (Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapter 106)

The battle with Śambara

Pradyumna challenged Śambara openly on the battlefield. Śambara sent his hundred sons against him. Pradyumna slew them all with his arrows, ten, then twenty, then all one hundred.

Then Śambara himself came onto the field on a grand chariot. He brought a thousand soldiers, a hundred elephants, two hundred chariots and eight thousand horses. Pradyumna met him without fear.

The battle was fierce. Śambara used his great māyā (power of illusion), but it failed him in this hour of destiny. He hurled his mace (mudgara) at Pradyumna’s chest. But Pradyumna had first prayed to the presiding deva and had received a vara (a boon): the mudgara would turn into a garland of lotuses when it touched him. So the weapon fell on Pradyumna as a lotus garland (māla) and hung on his neck as an ornament.

Pradyumna then called up the Vaishṇavāstra and said: “If I am the son of Rukmiṇī and Keśava, let this weapon slay Śambara!” The weapon pierced Śambara through the heart, and the great asura fell dead on the ground. Siddhas, gandharvas and maharshis cried out with joy. Indra rejoiced and rained down flowers. (Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapters 107–109)

Return to Dvārakā

After Śambara’s death, Pradyumna was tired but victorious. He went back to Māyāvatī, who was his true wife even though no rite had made her so. Together they travelled by the sky-path to Dvārakā, carried by the power of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa’s grace.

They came to the antaḥpura, the women’s quarters of Kṛshṇa’s palace. The women there were struck at once with wonder, fear and joy. The young man before them looked exactly like Kṛshṇa, as though Nārāyaṇa had appeared again.

Rukmiṇī had wept in grief for years. She saw this shining young warrior and told her co-wives of a dream she had seen that very morning. In the dream, Kṛshṇa had put a pearl garland on her neck, and a woman carrying a lotus garland had entered the house and bathed her head. She knew the dream was a sign that her son was coming home.

Nārada Maharshi came and told Kṛshṇa the whole account: the slaying of Śambara, that Māyāvatī was Rati, and that Pradyumna had returned. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa then turned to Rukmiṇī and said: “This is your son who has slain Śambara. This woman, Māyāvatī, is his wife. She is your daughter-in-law. Welcome them both into the house.”

Rukmiṇī was overcome with joy and embraced her son and her daughter-in-law. Pradyumna bowed to the ground before his father and mother and before Balarāma. The family was together again. (Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapter 110)

Sources

• Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapter 106 (birth, abduction, Māyāvatī, the truth)
• Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapters 107–109 (the battle with Śambara)
• Hari Vaṃśa Purāṇa, Vishṇu Parva, Chapter 110 (return to Dvārakā)