Narakasura, the demon that Krsna killed, had a friend who was an ape, Dvivida. After Krsna killed Narakasura, Dvivida, seeking vengeance, caused all kinds of disturbances, flooding the coastal lands by splashing water with his mighty arms. He would also tear down trees in the ashrams of the sages who lived in seclusion, and would even pass stool and urine on the sacrificial fires and arena. This devious rascal would even kidnap innocent men and women and imprison them in mountain caves, and he would try to pollute the chaste and modest women of respectable families with his own materialistic ways.
Previously Dvivida was an associate of Lord Ramacandra, but due to his disrespect to Rama and Laxman, he was sent away. Due to his pride and offensive mentality, even though he was an attendant of Lord Rama for some time and fought against Ravana’s army, he was sent away. Lord Rama sometimes chants hymns addressed to His devotees Mainda and Dvivida.
One day this delinquent Dvivida came to Vrajabhumi where he found Lord Balarama dancing in the forest with his ‘gopis’. Balarama was rather intoxicated from drinking varuni liquor and enjoying the gopis’ company. At that time Dvivida came into the clearing and in an uncouth way, displayed his anus to the ‘gopis’ right in front of the Lord. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, began to make all kinds of crude gestures, and moved his eyebrows this way and that. Then he passed stool and urine in front of everyone. Dvivida’s outrageous behaviour angered Lord Balarama, and to get rid of the ape he threw a stone at him. To add further insult, the demoniac ape started to tug at the clothes of the ‘gopis’. Lord Balarama decided that He didn’t have to put up with this. Taking his plough and club in hand, he neared Dvivida, who in turn took up a tree. When Balarama smashed the tree to tiny pieces, Dvivida picked up another. Balarama repeated the action. Dvivida picked up another and another, until the forest was bare. Balarama smashed them all to splinters. Dvivida then foolishly tried his luck with rocks, but Balarama turned them to powder. In desperation Dvivida charged Balaram and pounded on Balarama’s chest with his fists. Lord Balarama had decided the playing had come to an end. Infuriated, Lord Balaram put down His plough and club and approached the ape and smashed his collar bone and neck instantly with one swipe. Vomiting blood, Dvivida fell down dead.
Lord Balarama then returned to Dwaraka as the demigods and sages showered flowers, and glorified him with prayers and obeisances.
During the great Mahabharata war, Krsna helped Arjuna and spoke (sung) the Gita-Upanisad for the benefit of all humanity. Madhwa remembered how in these wonderful arrangements of Krsna’s pastimes, Vayu (Mukhyapran) incarnates as Bhima, Sugriva as Karna, and Vali as Arjuna.(Mahabharat Tatparyanirnaya.)
Lord Balarama, to avoid conflict, went on a pilgrimage to all the holy places and returned after the war was over. During this time Madhwa remembered his own pastimes with the Lord as this expansion of Lord Vayu, Mukhyaprana, played out his part of Bhima in the Lord’s association.
By the grace of Lord Sri Krsna, the Kauravas were completely destroyed and Arjuna and his brothers were victorious.
Madhwa, of course, relished the meeting of Bhima and Hanuman, where Bhimasena tried to lift the outstretched tail of Hanuman that was blocking the path. Simultaneously they are one and yet different expansions of Vayu Deva, Mukhyaprana.
Sri Krsna and Balarama’s transcendental ‘lila’ was about the wind up. After one hundred and twenty five years, the eternal youths had decided to return with all Their paraphernalia to Their eternal abode. Greatly fearing separation from the Lord, Uddhava, Krsna’s dear devotee, was distraught for he could not give up the Lord’s company. Finally, feeling great pain and offering obeisances again and again, and placing the Lord’s slippers on his head, Uddhava departed for Badrikasrama. On route to that place he heard of the Lord going to Prabhasaksetra. Uddhava then returned to the Dwaraka in the spiritual sky via Badrikashrama.
Lord Krsna took note of many bad omens that announced that soon the Kali Yuga would appear. There was a halo around the sun, and on earth there were small earthquakes. In outer space there was an unnatural redness on the horizon. All this announced like flags of death in Dwaraka, the end of the Dwapara Yuga. Krsna advised the Yadavas to abandon Dwaraka and go to Prabhasaksetra on the bank of the Saraswati. At that place the heroes of the Yadu dynasty, covered by the Lord’s internal potency, became intoxicated from their extravagant drinking and began to feel arrogant. When they were thus bewildered by the Lord’s personal potency, Krsna Maya, a terrible quarrel arose among them. Infuriated, they seized their bows and arrows, swords, lances, clubs and spears, and attacked one another on the shore of the ocean. Riding on elephants and chariots, with their battle flags flying, some rode on donkeys, camels, bulls, buffaloes, mules and even human beings, the extremely enraged warriors came together and violently attacked on another with arrows, just as elephants in the forest attack one another with their tusks.
Thus bewildered, sons fought with fathers, brothers with brothers, nephews with paternal and maternal uncles, grandsons with grandfather. Friends fought with friends and other well-wishers fought with well wishers. In this way, the intimate friends and relatives killed one another. When all their bows were broken and their arrows, lances and missiles spent, they fought with stalks of cane with their bare hands. These stalks in their powerful fists were like iron rods. With these weapons the warriors attacked each other again and again, and when Lord Krsna tried to stop them they attacked Him also. Mistaking Lord Balarama for an enemy they attacked Him also.
Now the Supreme Lords were angry, and taking up cane stalks, they began to kill everyone with these mighty cane clubs. When every last member of the Yadu dynasty were killed, Krsna thought to Himself that now the burden of the earth had been removed. 560 million warriors died in this fratricidal battle of the Yadu dynasty.
Lord Balarama then sat down on the shore of the ocean and fixed Himself in mediation upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Merging Himself within Himself, He gave up this world in a rather unique way. Lord Balarama manifested a pure white snake from His own mouth, climbed upon it’s back, and rode off back to His eternal abode.
Lord Krsna, the son of Devaki, having watched the disappearance pastime of Lord Balarama, seated Himself under a nearby pippala tree. then by the Lord’s arrangement a hunter named Jara approached that place. Mistaking the Lord’s lotus foot for the soft pinkness of a deer’s face and thinking he had found his prey, Jara touched the foot with his arrow thinking he had pierced it.
In Madhwacarya’s Mahabharata-Tatparya-Nirnaya, he states that all this has taken place to bewilder the demoniac class of men. The four armed form of the Lord was never harmed by the arrows of Jara, who is actually the devotee Bhrgu Muni, who previously placed his foot on the chest of Lord Visnu to find out who was the Supreme Person, after first approaching Lord Brahma and then Lord Shiva. Anyway, Brghu Muni, in the guise of a hunter, concluded the Lord’s pastimes as previously arranged.
Covered by the Lord’s internal potency into thinking that he had shot the arrow into Krsna, humbly and ashamed in this way, Jara begged forgiveness saying, “I am the most sinful person. I have committed this act out of ignorance. O purest Lord, please forgive this sinner!” Krsna then explained that everything was actually going according to His plan and that the hunter Jara was only playing his part. “Now hunter, go to the spiritual world upon this aeroplane and reside there with Me.” Circumambulating the Lord three times and offering obeisances, bowing before the Lord the hunter ascended onto the aeroplane. Then while Daruka (Krsna’s chariot driver) was looking for his Lord, he suddenly found an unusually strong aroma of Tulasi. Following that aroma he found Krsna resting at the foot of a banyan tree. Right before Daruka’s tearful eyes, and as Daruka was still speaking to the Lord, Krsna and His chariot suddenly rose in the sky along with it’s horses and flag marked with Garuda. All the weapons of the Lord, personified, rose up and followed the chariot. Krsna then spoke to the astonished Daruka, and instructed him to go to Dwaraka and tell all His family how all their family members had destroyed one another. Tell them of the disappearance of My Sankarsana (Balarama) and of My present condition. Both you and your relatives should not stay in Dwaraka any longer. Myself (Krsna), having abandoned that place, it will soon become unmanifest by becoming inundated by the great ocean. Go and seek Arjuna’s shelter and protection at Indraprastha.
Then after circumambulating Krsna and taking Krsna’s lotus feet on his head, Daruka returned with the Lord’s message to Dwaraka. Upon hearing from Daruka the news that Krsna had wound up His pastimes and had returned to His abode, Vasudeva and all of Krsna’s family and associates remaining in Dwaraka became disturbed by lamentation and left Dwaraka in search of the Lord. Though Devaki, Rohini and many others actually remained in Dwaraka as they do today, invisible to material eyes, their partial expansions went to Prabhasaksetra to see their dead relatives. They then entered into fire.
tatah katipayair masair
vrsni-bhojandhakadayah
yayuh prabhasam samhrsta
rathair deva-vimohitah
“A few months passed, and then, bewildered by Krsnamaya, all the descendants of Vrsni, Bhoja, Andhaka who were incarnations of various demigods went to Prabhasa, while those who were eternal devotees of the Lord did not leave but remained in Dwaraka.”(Srimad Bhagavatam 3:3:25.)
Even though the Pandavas were also demigods, they, as eternal associates of the Lord, also went to Dwaraka. The ‘niskarma bhaktas’ or ‘nitya-suri’ devotees without any material desires are always the Lord’s intimate associates, whereas the ‘sakarma bhaktas’, though still devotees (‘nitya-samsarins’), have the tendency to try to fulfil their own desires. Thus it was the ‘sakarma devas’ who went to the Prabhasksetra and not the unalloyed devotees. Madhwa confirms this in his Sutra Bhasya (3:3:27.), that they Lord is best served by those who are “released souls’. Released from what? The desires of the material world. Therefore he is talking about the ‘nitya suris’ who are cent percent only dedicated to fulfilling the desires of the Lord.
Arjuna kept a cool head by remembering the many instructions Krsna had personally given to him. Arjuna deposited Rukmini Devi’s own personal deities of Krsna and Balarama as small boys in the Rukmini Vana of Dwaraka, and then carried out the ‘antyesthi’, funeral rites and offerings of ‘pinda’ for all his dead relatives. Then the ocean engulfed and swallowed up Dwaraka Puri, all except for the Lord’s own residence.
Although Dwaraka had been created by the empowered devotee of the Lord, Vishvakarma, the architect of the demigods, and even parts of Dwaraka were brought direct from the heavenly planets like the Sudharma assembly hall, that Dwaraka Puri had now become unmanifest, though it is eternally there for those who are not covered by Krsna’s deluding potency, ‘maya’.
Remembering these pastimes of the Supreme Lord brings about devotional service and the same destination of being able to return to the Lord’s abode to eternally reside with Him.
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