Canto Ten - Chapter 3

Śrī Śuka said: Then the most auspicious time arrived, endowed with every favorable quality. The birth star of the Unborn Lord was rising, while the constellations, planets, and stars were peaceful.

The directions became clear, and the spotless sky shone with hosts of stars. The earth, with its towns, villages, cowherd settlements, and mines, abounded in auspiciousness.

The rivers flowed with clear water, lakes were beautiful with lotuses, and the forest groves were adorned by the sounds of flocks of birds and swarms of bees.

A pure breeze blew, pleasant to the touch and carrying sacred fragrances. The sacrificial fires of the twice-born burned calmly and steadily.

The minds of the saintly, who opposed the demons, became serene. As the Unborn Lord took birth, kettledrums sounded together.

Kinnaras and Gandharvas sang, Siddhas and Cāraṇas offered praise, and Vidyādhara women danced joyfully together with the Apsarās.

Sages and gods released showers of flowers in delight, while clouds gently rumbled in harmony with the ocean.

At midnight, when darkness covered everything, Janārdana appeared from the divine Devakī. Viṣṇu, who dwells in every heart, manifested like the full moon rising in the eastern sky.

Vasudeva saw that wondrous lotus-eyed child with four arms, bearing the conch, mace, and other uplifted weapons. He bore the Śrīvatsa mark and the Kaustubha jewel shining at His neck, wore yellow silk, and possessed the beauty of a dense rain cloud.

The radiance of His priceless vaidūrya crown and earrings embraced His abundant curling hair. A splendid belt, armlets, bracelets, and other ornaments made Him shine brilliantly.

When Ānakadundubhi saw Hari as his son, his eyes blossomed wide with wonder. Overwhelmed with the joy of Kṛṣṇa's birth festival, he mentally gave ten thousand cows to the brāhmaṇas.

Recognizing the child as the Supreme Puruṣa, Vasudeva understood His glory and lost all fear. O Bhārata, he bowed low, joined his palms with concentrated intelligence, and praised the Lord, whose own radiance illumined the birthing room.

Śrī Vasudeva said: I know that You are directly the Supreme Puruṣa, beyond material nature. Your essential form is the bliss of pure experience, and You witness every intelligence.

You alone created this universe of three qualities through Your own nature in the beginning. Although You do not actually enter it afterward, You appear to have entered it.

The unmodified elements, possessing diverse powers and existing separately, combine with their transformations to generate the cosmic form.

After coming together and producing it, those elements appear to have entered their effect. Yet because they existed before it, they did not truly come into being within it.

In the same way, although You are present and may be inferred through qualities grasped by the intelligence, You remain untouched by those qualities. Because You are never enclosed, there is no inside or outside for You, the Self of all and the reality of every self.

An ignorant person decides that the Self exists among visible qualities as something separate from its own true nature. Such reasoning is unsound without acknowledging the underlying reality, for one first rejects the cause and then accepts its effect.

O all-pervading Lord, the birth, maintenance, and dissolution of this universe are said to arise from You, although You are actionless, beyond qualities, and unchanging. This is no contradiction in You, the Lord and Brahman, because all qualities depend upon You and are therefore attributed to You.

Through Your own māyā You assume the white form of pure sattva for the preservation of the three worlds, the red form strengthened by rajas for creation, and the dark form joined with tamas when beings are dissolved.

O all-powerful Lord of all, You have descended into my home to protect this world. You will destroy the armies now led forth by countless commanders of demons bearing the names of kings.

O Lord of the gods, that uncivilized Kaṃsa has already killed Your elder brothers. When he hears from his agents that You have appeared in our home, he will come here at once with weapons raised.

Śrī Śuka said: Devakī then looked upon her son, saw the signs of the Supreme Person, and approached Him. Deeply amazed, she was nevertheless afraid of Kaṃsa.

Śrī Devakī said: You are directly Viṣṇu, the light of spiritual knowledge. The wise call Your form the unmanifest and primeval Brahman, pure radiance beyond qualities and change, existence itself without material distinction or desire.

At the end of Brahmā's full lifespan, when the worlds are destroyed, the great elements return to their primordial source, and the manifest is carried into the unmanifest by the force of Time, You alone remain, known as Śeṣa, the remainder of all.

O Lord of the unmanifest, what is called Time is Your activity, by which the universe moves, from the smallest instant to the span of a year and beyond. I take refuge in You, the supreme ruler and abode of all security.

A mortal terrified by the serpent of death may flee through every world but finds no place free from fear. Yet one who somehow reaches Your lotus feet rests in peace today, and death itself withdraws from that person.

You remove the terror of Your servants. Please protect us, who are frightened by the terrible son of Ugrasena. And please do not keep this divine form, the object of meditation, visible to those whose eyes see only flesh.

O Madhusūdana, may the sinful Kaṃsa not learn of Your birth from me. Because of You I am terrified of Kaṃsa, and my mind has become unsteady.

O Soul of the universe, withdraw this supernatural four-armed form, resplendent with conch, disc, mace, and lotus.

At the close of the cosmic night, You, the Supreme Puruṣa, hold this entire universe within Your own body in its proper place. Yet now that same Lord has entered my womb. How astonishing is this divine imitation of human life!

Śrī Bhagavān said: In the age of Svāyambhuva Manu during a former creation, you were Pṛśni, and this Vasudeva was the faultless Prajāpati named Sutapā.

When Brahmā instructed you both to create progeny, you restrained the entire host of your senses and performed the highest austerity.

You endured rain, wind, blazing sun, snow, heat, and every condition of the seasons. By controlling your breath, you cleansed the impurities of the mind.

Eating only fallen leaves and air, and with minds completely pacified, you worshiped Me, desiring to receive your cherished boon from Me.

While you both, your minds fixed upon Me, performed that fierce and exceedingly difficult austerity, twelve thousand celestial years passed.

O sinless mother, I was then fully satisfied with you. Constantly contemplated within your hearts through austerity, faith, and devotion, I appeared before you in this very form.

As the sovereign giver of boons, I appeared wishing to fulfill your desire and said, 'Choose a boon.' You then chose that I should become a son like Myself for you both.

Because you were a married couple who had not experienced ordinary sensual enjoyment and had no child, you were bewildered by divine māyā and did not choose liberation from Me.

After I departed, you obtained the boon of a son like Me. Your desire fulfilled, you then enjoyed the proper pleasures of married household life.

Finding no one else in the world equal to Me in character, generosity, and other virtues, I Myself became your son and was celebrated as Pṛśnigarbha.

I later appeared again from the two of you when you were Aditi and Kaśyapa. I became famous as Upendra and, because I assumed a dwarf form, as Vāmana.

Now, in this third birth, I have again been born from you both in this very form. O faithful mother, My words have proven true.

I showed you this form so that you would remember My previous births. Otherwise, when I appeared with ordinary human features, knowledge of My divine nature would not arise in you.

Constantly thinking of Me both as your son and as Brahman, and united with Me through parental affection, you two will attain My supreme abode.

Śrī Śuka said: Having spoken in this way, Bhagavān Hari became silent. By His own māyā, while His parents watched, He at once became an ordinary infant.

Then, inspired by Bhagavān, Śauri Vasudeva took his son and prepared to leave the birthing room. At that very time, the unborn Yogamāyā was born from the wife of Nanda.

Through her power, every faculty of awareness in the gatekeepers and citizens was withdrawn, and all of them fell asleep. Every door, though tightly closed with massive panels, iron bolts, and chains,

opened by itself when Vasudeva approached carrying Kṛṣṇa, just as darkness withdraws before the sun. The rain god poured down rain with gentle thunder, while Śeṣa followed, shielding the child from the water with His hoods.

Though Indra rained again and again, the Yamunā, younger sister of Yama, gave a path to the Lord. Her deep and swiftly rushing waters were foaming and filled with hundreds of frightening whirlpools, yet she parted like the ocean before the Lord of Śrī.

Śauri reached Nanda's cowherd settlement and found all the cowherds there fast asleep. He placed his son upon Yaśodā's bed, took up her daughter, and returned to his own dwelling.

Vasudeva laid the baby girl upon Devakī's bed, fastened the iron shackles upon his feet again, and remained confined just as before.

Yaśodā, the wife of Nanda, knew only that a child had been born. Exhausted by labor and deprived of memory by sleep, she could not even determine the child's sex.