Bāla Mukunda Darśana

In the Vana Parva of the Mahābhārata, the immortal ṛshi Mārkaṇḍeya tells the Pāṇḍavas what he saw himself at the time of mahā-pralaya, the great dissolution at the end of a kalpa (a day of Brahmā). He saw Bāla Mukunda, the shining child form of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, resting on a vaṭa (banyan) leaf in the endless waters. Mārkaṇḍeya entered the child’s body, travelled through the whole universe inside it, and came out again. The child then told him who he truly is.

Mārkaṇḍeya, the witness who does not die

These chapters belong to the Mārkaṇḍeya Samāsyā section of the Vana Parva. Mārkaṇḍeya had been telling Yudhishṭhira and the Pāṇḍavas about the yugas, cosmic time and the structure of existence. He had told the account of the Matsya avatāra. Then he turned to his own greatest experience, the one that gave him direct knowledge of Brahman, beyond what reasoning or study of the scriptures can give. (Vana Parva, Chapter 188)

The ekārṇava, the one ocean

At the end of one of the great cycles of time, Mārkaṇḍeya saw the pralaya with his own eyes. All the worlds dissolved. All beings ceased. The three worlds, the mountains, the rivers and the skies were drawn into the first undivided waters, called the ekārṇava. Mārkaṇḍeya found himself alone, floating in this dark and boundless ocean. He had nothing to guide him, no other living being, and not even the sun or the stars.

He wandered in this ocean for an immeasurably long time, alone and without direction. There was no ground, no form and no light, only the wide waters and the darkness. (Vana Parva, Chapter 188)

The vaṭa leaf and the child

During this wandering Mārkaṇḍeya saw a single vaṭa tree. On one of its leaves rested a small, shining child. The child was very beautiful, dark like a rain cloud, peaceful and perfectly calm. He lay on the leaf as easily and contentedly as an infant, untouched by the great dissolution all around him. He looked like a child in every way. Yet the stillness and depth of his presence were beyond anything Mārkaṇḍeya had ever met.

The child smiled at Mārkaṇḍeya and invited him to enter his body through his mouth. Drawn by a power he could not explain, Mārkaṇḍeya entered. (Vana Parva, Chapter 188)

The universe inside the child

Inside the child’s body Mārkaṇḍeya did not find emptiness. He found everything. The three worlds were there, with all the mountains, their peaks and forests, all the rivers and oceans, all the devas and other beings, all the cities, kingdoms and forests, and all the tīrthas. The whole cosmos he had known was held inside the body of this child.

Mārkaṇḍeya wandered inside the child for more than a hundred years, and he never reached a boundary or an end. The child’s body had no limit. All of creation was contained in this one small and endless being. (Vana Parva, Chapter 188)

The child tells who he is

In time Mārkaṇḍeya was breathed out of the child’s body and found himself once more on the vaṭa leaf in the ekārṇava. The child spoke to him. He said that he is Nārāyaṇa, the ground of all that exists, the purusha who is both the source and the end of all worlds. He is not born inside creation. Creation is born inside him. He is the ātman of all beings and the unchanging witness of everything that arises and passes away.

The child then spoke of his relation to all the devas:

• He is Brahmā, who sends out the worlds at the start of each cycle.
• He is Indra, the king of the devas.
• He is Śiva, who brings the cycle to its end.
• He is every other deva as well, each one a particular side or work of the one reality underneath.

He said that he is the purusha from whose body the four varṇas came: the brāhmaṇa from his mouth, the kshatriya from his arms, the vaiśya from his thighs and the śūdra from his feet. (Vana Parva, Chapter 189)

How he appears in the four yugas

The child told how he shows himself differently in each of the four yugas:

• In the Kṛta yuga he is white, four-armed and four-footed. He is complete, and dharma stands on all four of its feet (pāda).
• In the Tretā yuga he is yellow and three-footed.
• In the Dvāpara yuga he is red and two-footed.
• In the Kali yuga he is dark (kṛshṇa) and one-footed, as dharma falls away.

He takes an avatāra when dharma declines and adharma rises. He does this to set dharma right again, to protect those who are devoted to him, and to begin the next cycle. (Vana Parva, Chapter 189)

The child is Śrī Kṛshṇa

When the vision was told, Mārkaṇḍeya turned to the Pāṇḍavas and to Śrī Kṛshṇa, who were seated before him. He said that the child he had seen in the pralaya was Śrī Kṛshṇa himself, the very person sitting there among the Pāṇḍavas. This Kṛshṇa is the same Nārāyaṇa who rested on the vaṭa leaf in the mahā-pralaya, who held the whole universe within himself, and who comes down in every age to restore dharma.

Yudhishṭhira, Bhīma, Arjuna, Nakula, Sahadeva and Draupadī all heard Mārkaṇḍeya name Kṛshṇa as Nārāyaṇa, the child seen in the pralaya. The ancient ṛshi, who had seen the child with his own eyes, named the Kṛshṇa sitting among them as the cosmic child, and the Vana Parva gives this as witness to Kṛshṇa’s divine nature. (Vana Parva, Chapter 189)

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 188
• Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 189