Harivamsha 51
English (machine translation) 51
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51.1
Vaiśaṃpāyana said: / As time passed, those two gentle boys, having received their names, / reached five years of age, repeatedly adorning the cowherd settlement. / Both Kṛṣṇa and Saṃkarṣaṇa began crawling on all fours.
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Those two boys, bound to one another, united from childhood itself, / holding the same counsel, lovely, possessed the brilliance of the young moon and sun.
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Endowed with the same constitution, sharing bed, seat, and food, / bearing the same dress, maintaining the same childish behavior,
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engaged in the same purpose, a single body divided into two, / of identical conduct, of great prowess, having attained childhood of the One,
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the sole standard for the worlds, gods in human form through their deeds, / protectors of the entire universe, they became cowherd boys.
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Adorned by games intertwined with each other, / they were like the moon and sun in the sky enveloped in each other's rays.
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Crawling everywhere, both having arms like serpent coils, / their limbs smeared with dust, they shone like two proud elephant calves.
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Their limbs smeared with ashes in one place, sprinkled with dry cow dung in another, / the two ran about there like the two sons of Fire.
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In some places, crawling on scraped knees, they shone, / playing in the calf-pens, their limbs and hair smeared with cow dung.
51.10
Endowed with beauty, they shone, generating delight for their father, / gathering the people, O brahmin, and laughing in various places.
51.11
Those two lovely children, their eyes veiled by their curls, / moon-faced and delicate, the two boys shone.
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Deeply attached to the cowherd settlements, filling the settlement [with their noise],
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seeing those two utterly wild boys deeply attached, roaming through the entire cowpen, / Nandagopa was unable to restrain them.
51.13
Then Yaśodā, enraged, spoke to lotus-eyed Kṛṣṇa, / the Lord of the universe wandering in the form of a child: / ‘Come, child, drink my breast milk, which is now hard to bear! / Where have you gone outside the house for all this time?’ / Thus taking her son by the hand, banishing him from the house in anger, / bringing him to the base of a cart, rebuking him again and again,
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and having tied him around the belly with a rope, she tied him to a mortar. / Telling him, ‘If you are able, go!’, she went about her work. / While Yaśodā was occupied, he went out from the courtyard.
51.15
Then, performing childish play, Kṛṣṇa, astonishing the cowherd settlement — / having gone out of the courtyard, Kṛṣṇa dragged the mortar.
51.16
Moving in the forest toward two tall, twin arjuna trees, / the child emerged from between them, dragging the mortar.
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As he dragged it, the tied mortar turned sideways; / wedged against those two rooted arjuna trees, he pulled them down.
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Dragged by that child with speed, the two arjuna trees,
their branches and roots broken, crashed down, while he laughed between them.
51.19
Demonstrating to the cowherds his own divine strength, / that rope became tight through the power of that child.
51.20
Standing on the path to the banks of the Yamunā, the cowherd women saw the child; / crying out and marveling, they went to Yaśodā.
51.21
Those women, with flustered faces, said to Yaśodā: / 'Come, come, Yaśodā! Why do you delay in this commotion?
51.22
Those two arjuna trees in the settlement, prayed to for vows, / have fallen on top of your son, those two trees! / Those two trees have fallen on top of your son!
51.23
Tied right there around the belly with a firm rope like a calf, / between the two trees your child, that son of yours, laughed!
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Laughing between the two trees as if playing in a courtyard!
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Rise, go, you foolish woman, simpleton who thinks herself clever! / Bring back your son alive, as if rescued from the jaws of death!'
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Frightened, rising up at once and crying out 'Alas! Alas!', / she went to that place where those two great trees had fallen.
51.26
Between those two trees she saw her infant son / tied around the belly with a rope, dragging the mortar.
51.27
Then the whole settlement—the cowherd women, old cowherds, and youths— / gathered round to see this great wonder among the cowherds.
51.28
The cowherds wandering in the forest spoke as they pleased; / agog, they all spoke with minds full of wonder: / 'By whom were these two trees felled, the foremost trees of the settlement itself?
51.29
Without wind, without rain, without lightning strikes, / without harm done by elephants, by whom were these two trees felled?
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Oh, alas! These two uprooted arjuna trees look so forlorn, / fallen on the earth like two clouds emptied of water!
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For these two adorned the settlement and brought good fortune to the settlement.'
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'Nandagopa, the two trees were gracious to you even in this state, / since by those uprooted [trees] your boy was left unharmed.'
51.32
'This is the third portent here in the settlement: / the fall of Pūtanā, of the two trees, and of the cart.
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This settlement should not remain in this place, / for portents are seen here portending misfortune.'
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Then Nandagopa quickly freed Kṛṣṇa from the mortar, / placed him on his lap for a long time as if one returned from death,
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and could not gaze enough upon lotus-eyed Kṛṣṇa.
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Then, rebuking Yaśodā, Nandagopa entered [his home], / and all the cowherd folk returned to the settlement.
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And by that very name, from the binding with a rope, / because he was bound around the belly very firmly with a rope in the cow-pen, / Kṛṣṇa is celebrated by the cowherd women in the settlement as Dāmodara.
51.37
Such was the miraculous exploit of the child Kṛṣṇa, / O best of the Bharatas, while living in the settlement at that time.
Linked texts (1)
- Harivaṃśa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit