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STORIES · THE MAHĀBHĀRATA · Mausala
Balarāma Leaves the World
Classical
The Yādavas have killed each other in a drunken brawl at Prabhāsa, with iron clubs grown from the pounded fragments of the pestle, and only Kṛṣṇa, Balarāma, Dāruka and Babhru are left. Kṛṣṇa and Dāruka go after Balarāma to find where he has gone. They find him sitting in a lonely place, leaning against a tree, deep in thought.
Kṛṣṇa sends Dāruka to Hastināpura to tell Arjuna of the slaughter and bring him quickly. He sends Babhru to protect the women from thieves. Babhru has gone only a little way when an iron bolt, which has fastened to a hunter's mallet, flies at the last Yādava and kills him, for he too was under the brahmins' curse. Kṛṣṇa goes briefly to Dvārakā to tell his father to guard the women until Arjuna arrives, and returns to the forest, where Balarāma is waiting.
There he sees the mighty Balarāma in yoga. From his mouth comes a great white serpent with a thousand heads, large as a mountain, with red eyes. Leaving the human body, the great Nāga goes towards the ocean. The Ocean himself, the divine snakes and the sacred rivers come to receive him: Karkoṭaka, Vāsuki, Takṣaka, Pṛthuśravas, Varuṇa and others bring him water and offerings, and honour him.
Kṛṣṇa, who knows how all things end, wanders for a while in the empty forest and then sits on the ground. He remembers Gāndhārī's curse and the words of Durvāsas who once smeared him with the leftover payasa. He concludes that the hour for his own going has come. He restrains his senses and lies down in yoga.
The next to follow is the hunter Jarā, who mistakes Kṛṣṇa's foot for a deer and wounds him, which begins Kṛṣṇa's own ascent. In the Mahābhārata Balarāma's departure is told in just a few lines, as an almost incidental scene before this. Later tradition recognises him as the incarnation of Śeṣa, the serpent on whom Viṣṇu rests, which is exactly what this scene shows.
Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya
Who: Balarāma, Kṛṣṇa, Dāruka, Babhru
Bound to
The Mausala (Yādava fall) origin
Krishna's death by the hunter Jara origin
Samba's pregnancy prank and the iron bolt that ended the Yadavas curse
Gandhari's curse: 36 years and the Yadavas die curse
Dwarka sinks origin
Places: Prabhāsa, Dvārakā, sea shore
Where this comes from
- read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (text as scanned on archive.org; mahabharataonline.com section pages could not be opened from the working environment) Mausala Parva, Sections IV-V (in Ganguli numbering Section IV, with Section VII for the cremation)