Tṛṇāvarta

Tṛṇāvarta · tṛṇa-āvarta, “the whirl that sweeps up the grass”

Tṛṇāvarta was a man-eating rākshasa, a servant of Kaṃsa, who took the form of a great whirlwind and carried the infant Śrī Kṛshṇa up into the sky from Gokula. The child grew heavier than a boulder, gripped him by the throat, and the rākshasa fell lifeless onto a rock. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa calls his end his uddhāra (being lifted up, deliverance), and those who knew Śrī Kṛshṇa remembered it ever after among his līlās.

Kaṃsa’s follower

Śuka tells Parīkshit that Kaṃsa, with Jarāsandha of Magadha as his support, set about destroying the Yādavas with his followers Pralamba, Baka, Cāṇūra, Tṛṇāvarta, Agha, Mushṭika, Arishṭa, Dvivida, Pūtanā, Keśī and Dhenuka, and with the help of other rākshasa kings such as Bāṇāsura and Narakāsura.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 2

The whirlwind over Gokula

One day the infant Kṛshṇa climbed onto the lap of his mother Yaśodā Devī, and suddenly he felt to her as heavy as a mountain peak. Unable to bear the weight, she set him down on the ground, meditated on the Purushottama, and turned to the work of the house.

Then Kaṃsa sent his servant, the rākshasa Tṛṇāvarta. In the form of a great whirlwind he carried off the child where he sat. The whirlwind covered all Gokula; dust shut people’s eyes, and the directions echoed with a terrifying sound. For about an hour Gokula lay under dust and darkness, and bewildered by the sand he flung, no one could see himself or anyone else. Yaśodā found no trace of her son and fell to the ground weeping like a cow whose calf has died, and when the wind fell the gopīs, not seeing the child, wept with her.

Tṛṇāvarta reached the sky, but the weight he carried grew so great that his speed failed and he could go no further. The wondrous child was heavier than the rākshasa; to him he felt like a boulder. The child seized him by the neck, and he could not get free. Choked, his movements ceased, his eyes bulged, no sound came from his mouth, and lifeless he fell back into Gokula with the child. Like Tripura struck by the arrow of Rudra, he fell from the sky onto a rock, every limb shattered. The gopīs found the child hanging on the rākshasa’s chest, unharmed, and gave him to Yaśodā, and Nanda and all the gopas and gopīs were filled with joy. “That wicked one has met death by his own pāpa,” they said, and wondered what tapas, dāna or service they had done that the child had come back to them from the jaws of death.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 7

How he is remembered

  • The gopas, telling Nanda of Kṛshṇa‘s wonders, recalled that when he was one year old the rākshasa Tṛṇāvarta carried him off through the sky, and he seized his throat, pressed it and killed him (Skandha 10, Chapter 26).
  • In the night of the Rāsa, when Śrī Kṛshṇa had withdrawn from sight, the gopīs enacted his līlās: one gopī, playing Tṛṇāvarta, carried away another who played the child Kṛshṇa (Skandha 10, Chapter 30). In the Gopī-gīta they sang that he had protected them from Tṛṇāvarta and from every fear (Skandha 10, Chapter 31).
  • The people of Mathurā, seeing Kṛshṇa and Balarāma, said that he had slain Pūtanā, Tṛṇāvarta who had the form of a whirlwind, Śaṅkhacūḍa, Keśī, Dhenuka and others (Skandha 10, Chapter 43).
  • Nanda told Uddhava that in Vṛndāvana Śrī Kṛshṇa easily destroyed Pralamba, Dhenuka, Arishṭa, Tṛṇāvarta, Baka and Agha, all of whom had earlier won victories over devatās and rākshasas (Skandha 10, Chapter 46).
  • Sūta, giving the contents of the Bhāgavata, names the crushing of Tṛṇāvarta to powder among the līlās of Śrī Kṛshṇa’s childhood (Skandha 12, Chapter 12).

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 26, 30–31, 43, 46; Skandha 12, Chapter 12

Sources

  • Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 2, 7, 26, 30–31, 43, 46; Skandha 12, Chapter 12