Harināma Kīrtanam · Verse 36

The thirty-sixth verse continues the līlā-vaicitrya register. The verse names two episodes that, in the Krishna-narrative, illustrate the same Lord acting in unexpected ways. Reducing the five-syllable mantra by some letters for the demon of the night. The reference is to the demon Putanā, who came to kill the infant Krishna by giving him poisoned breast milk; Krishna, by drinking, killed her, and her demon-form was reduced. Turning the hunchbacked maid into a beautiful woman. The reference is to Trivakra/Kubjā, the bent-backed maidservant of King Kamsa whom Krishna touched and straightened, transforming her into a beautiful woman. The verse asks: was that not the same one acting in both? The Lord who killed and the Lord who beautified are one.

The verse names the affectionate paradox at the heart of bhakti: the Lord destroys some and beautifies others, and both are forms of his grace.

The Living Words

Ṅānaṁ kaṇakke uḍan añca-akṣaraṅṅaḷ-uṭe yūnaṁ varuttiyoru naktan-cariku bata. Like the chant, you reduced the five-syllable mantra (pañca-akṣarī, the Oṁ namaḥ Śivāya or here possibly the demon-killing mantra) by some letters for the night-walker (the naktan-carī, Putanā). Yūnaṁ varuttiya is caused diminution, reduced; the verse alludes to the moment Krishna, by drinking the poisoned milk, drained the demon's life-syllables.

Kūnnōru dāsiye manojñāṁgi-yākkiyatum onnalle yāḷu Hari Nārāyaṇāya namaḥ. And the hunchbacked maidservant whom you made beautiful, was that not also the same one acting? Kūnna is bent, hunchbacked; dāsi is maidservant; manojñāṁgi is one with a beautiful body; onnalle yāḷu is was that not the same person?

Scripture References

The Heart of It

The Bhāgavata 10.6 tells the Putanā story: the demon-nurse who came in beautiful form to suckle the infant Krishna, intending to poison him. The infant drank the milk, drank the prāṇa with it, drank the demon's whole life until she fell as a giant corpse. The Bhāgavata 10.42 tells the Trivakrā/Kubjā story: the hunchbacked maid who carried sandal paste to King Kamsa, met Krishna on the way, gave him the paste, and was straightened by Krishna's touch, becoming beautiful. Two scenes from Krishna's youth. Two opposite results. One Lord's hand.

The verse-36 question (was that not the same one?) is rhetorical. The answer is yes. The Lord who drained the demon and the Lord who straightened the maid are the same Lord, acting in the manner the recipient could receive. Putanā received destruction (her demon-form deserved nothing else); Trivakrā received transformation (her devotion deserved nothing less). The Lord's response is shaped to the soul's actual condition.

If you have come to this verse uncertain whether the Lord meets you with destruction or transformation, the verse names the same Lord doing both, and asks the seeker to trust the response that arrives, whatever shape it takes. Hari Nārāyaṇāya namaḥ.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

Two saints whose lives received the verse-36 same-Lord-different-form recognition.

Yaśodā (also in verse 35) saw the same Krishna in two forms in the same year. In the Bhāgavata 10.5, she received him as the small son who breastfed and slept in her lap; in the Bhāgavata 10.7, she watched the demon Tṛṇāvarta lift him into the sky, return as a dust-storm, and fall dead while the small Krishna was held aloft by his own māyā. Yaśodā in her own life, then, met both the Putanā-pattern (the Lord arriving as the destroyer) and the Trivakrā-pattern (the Lord arriving as the beautifier). She did not have to choose between the two. She held both as Krishna.

Rūpa Gosvāmī, sixteenth-century Vrindavan, was one of the Six Gosvāmīs whom Caitanya Mahāprabhu sent from Bengal-Orissa to retrieve the lost places of Krishna's līlā in the Braj region. He composed the Bhakti-Rasāmṛta-Sindhu, the Sanskrit aesthetic theory of bhakti, in which he distinguishes the aiśvarya-līlā (Krishna's majestic acts: Putanā's slaying, Aghāsura's slaying, the viśvarūpa) from the mādhurya-līlā (Krishna's sweet acts: the gopis, the cows, Yaśodā's lap). The Bhakti-Rasāmṛta-Sindhu is the bhakti tradition's foundational answer to verse 36's was that not the same one acting? The body image is the saint at Govardhana, the Sanskrit treatise in his hand, the two registers of līlā arriving as one rasa.