Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c8.1323

c8.1323

4) Nārada became a woman. While staying once with Kṛṣṇa at Dvārakā, Nārada and the former went out a tour in an aerial chariot. On the way they saw a stream and Kṛṣṇa stopped the chariot there as Nārada wanted to quench his thirst at the stream. Nārada drank water from the stream disobeying Kṛṣṇa's injunction that he should bathe before drinking water, and lo! the next moment Nārada was turned into a woman and when ‘she’ looked around neither Kṛṣṇa nor the chariot was to be seen. She wandered about in the forest and at last reached an āśrama. When the Ṛṣi of the āśrama awoke from his samādhi he saw standing before him a beautiful woman who requested him to accept her as his disciple. He readily granted her request. The preceptor married the disciple and in due course of time she became the mother of sixty children. One day all the sixty children and their father expired together. The grief-stricken widow felt too weak to perform the obsequies of the dead. An extraordinary hunger also held her in its grips. She raised her hand to pluck a fruit from the mango tree that stood nearby but could not reach the mango above. She placed together the corpses one on the other, mounted upon the heap of dead bodies and plucked the mango-fruit. Immediately a brahmin arrived on the spot and exhorted the widow on the impropriety of taking food without bathing after the death of husband and children. Then the widow entered the stream and dived in its waters holding above water the hand in which was held the mango, and lo! it was Nārada who came out from the water. Only the hand, which had been held above water and did not therefore get wet, remained like that of a woman with bangles thereon. The brahmin, who stood there on the banks of the stream transformed himself into Kṛṣṇa. As ordered by Kṛṣṇa Nārada again dived with the whole of his body in the water when the hand also turned into that of a man. The mango held in the hand turned into an excellent Vīṇā. And Kṛṣṇa told Nārada: “The Ṛṣi who lived with you as your husband and who is no more is Kālapuruṣa, and the sixty children are years Prabhava, Vibhava etc.” Kṛṣṇa and Nārada then returned to Dvārakā. (Bhāgavata. 7th Skandha).