Bhagavatam study 30 – 1.7.15 -21 – Arjuna pacifies griefstruck Draupadi with fierce sweet words

Srimad Bhagavatam 1.7.15 mātā śiśorāṁ nidhanaṁ sūtānaṁ nishamya ghoram paritapyamāna tadārūdad vāspakalārulākṣi tāṁ sāntvayan āhakīrītamāli mātā śiśorāṁ nidhanaṁ sūtānaṁ So, here the background is that Ashwathama very atrociously killed the sons of Draupadi and when she heard it, mātā śiśorāṁ, the mother of those children, nidhanaṁ sūtānaṁ, the destruction of her sons.
So, here there is a poetic alliteration again of śiśunāṁ and sūtānaṁ. Unāṁsa is repeated and it is significant that although they were not infants, śiśu, sometimes word used to refer to the infants, the sons of Draupadi were not infants. They had also participated in the war.
But as compared to all the other warriors present, they were children. They were very, very young. And it requires, even in real life wars, when say one Arbans warrior is fighting with another warrior and the other warrior is masked and suddenly the mask falls off and then if you see the other warrior is just a 12-year-old or 15-year-old, 13-year-old, 14-year-old boy, and the warrior may hesitate, how can I attack or kill somebody so small? So, like that.
So, even in the midst of war among battle-hardened warriors, there is some compunction about attacking and killing small children even when they are fighting in the war. What to speak of those who are very young, barely in their teens? If they are sleeping, how can someone kill them? So, śiśu nāṁ. So, when she heard about how her children had been massacred, nidhanaṁ sūtānāṁ, it was devastating news.
Nishamya ghoram paritapyamāṇā. Nishamya. On hearing this, ghoram paritapyamāṇā, it was a devastating news which caused her to drown practically in an ocean of misery.
Paritapyamāṇā tadā rūdad vāśpa kalākulākṣi. Tadā rūdad. Rūdad is to cry.
At that time, she started crying very loudly. Vāśpa. Vāśpa is with tears.
Kalākulākṣi. Her eyes became filled to the brim with tears and had it overflowing. Āśru pūrṇākulekṣaṁ.
Ākulekṣa. This compound word is used in the Bhagavad Gita also to refer to Arjuna. Tadā kūpāyāviṣṭhaṁ āśru pūrṇākulekṣaṁ.
Viṣīdan tamidambākyaṁ vācimadu sūtanam. 2.1 it is described. So, here, Draupadi was devastated.
Tadā rūdad. She was teared. She saw crying here.
So, one is that tears are coming from the eyes. The other is that there are sounds of lamentation and grief coming, cries of lamentation and grief coming from the mouth. Both are.
Tadā rūdad vāśpa kalākulākṣi. Tāṁsāntvayan āha kiritamāli. Tāṁsāntvayan.
And then, trying to pacify her. āha kiritamāli. Kiritamāli is one who had a special crown.
Kirit is a crown. So, Kiriti is one of the names of Arjuna. So, kiritamāli is a variant of that name.
So, here, Arjuna started consoling Draupadi. Now, actually, Draupadi had five husbands and three of those husbands, she had one son. So, it’s a unique situation for Draupadi that all the Pāṇḍavas felt that they had lost their sons.
But each of them, they had one son and they had lost. Other four were their nephews. They were affectionate to their nephews, no doubt.
But still, there is a difference between the degree of affection for one’s own son and for one’s nephew. So, all the Pāṇḍavas were grief-struck. But for Draupadi, it was the worst affliction.
It was the flesh of flesh, as they say. The child is born from the mother’s flesh. Mother has kept the child in her womb for nine months and then she has fed her own breast milk.
So, to lose even one child is devastating. To lose all five sons in one go and that too, it was an act of brutality. It was intolerable.
Now, Arjuna sprang into action, tried to console Draupadi at that time. Arjuna himself was devastated, was infuriated. But he tried to calm and he controlled himself so that he could pacify Draupadi.
So, all the five Pāṇḍavas were dear to Draupadi. It was Arjuna who had won her hand in the Swayamvar and she had special affection for Arjuna. So, Arjuna took here the responsibility of offering her consolation, of trying to console her, of trying to offer her relief.
So, he assures her now, normally, when something devastating has happened, what can be done? If something, the children are dead, they can only be brought back to life. So, at the very least, what can be assured is that this wrongdoer will not get away scot-free. The one who has committed such atrocity will have to pay for it.
So, that is the Kshatriya spirit and that sort of spirit, the different people in different roles have different purposes to fulfill. So, the Kshatriyas are martial guardians of society and their blood needs to boil when atrocities are performed. Otherwise, those who are performers of such atrocity will not only get away scot-free, but they will become more brazen and do further atrocity.
So, this is not just a Vrindeta feud where one person wants to take revenge against another, but there is a higher purpose of the maintenance of law and order, which is important, which is vital when someone is getting carried away by delusion. So, here Arjuna is assuring her that your tears, O gentle one, O Bhadra, O auspicious one, your tears you can wipe away. This Brahmabandhu, this Ashwathama, who is not a Brahmana, although he is a son of a Brahmana, he acted in an abominable way and he can no longer be considered a Brahmana.
He is simply a Brahmabandhu. The head of this aggressor, that on the bow Gandiva, the arrow shot from the Gandiva bow, Muktair, that is released from, it’s like for a warrior, the arrows are eager to jump off and charge off into the action. So, to be released, they said you release an arrow from a bow.
There is tension in the string of the bow and with that tension, the string is pulled back and the arrow is released. The arrow is released, that English word release can be correlated with the Sanskrit word Muktair, that is released from the bow of Gandiva, it’s a formula bow. Vishikai Rupahare.
So, Shira, his head will be removed by the arrow, Rupahare, and that I will bring as a gift to you. Dagdaputra means after performing the last rites of your son, then you can take a bath and you can become free from your grief. So, he is telling her basically that you don’t have to grieve like this.
The wrongdoers will have to pay a price for what they have done. Dagdaputra. So, here of course, the point is not that Draupadi is literally going to bathe in the blood or anything like that.
That is a figurative way of expressing outrage. So, this way of talking is to invoke Kshatriya spirit, Kshatriya vigor and to express Kshatriya valor by which wrongdoers can be punished and whenever possible, wrongs can be righted. So, here, Atataina.
So, Atataina refers to an aggressor. Ataina, one who has come with a a stretched bow, that means one who has come ready to attack, such an aggressor. So, aggressors can be punished.
Ashwathama had become an aggressor and he deserved to be punished and he would be punished. Arjuna is assuring Draupadi over here. Kapidvajo guruputram rathena, iti priyam valgu vichitra jalpai.
So, in this way, by speaking in various ways, valgu. Now, valgu means sweet. In the Rasa Panchadhyay, this word valgu also comes from Madhurayagira, valgu vakyaya.
The word valgu comes frequently by talking about sweet speech. Now, we may say, oh, you can bathe in his blood, bathe on his head with his blood or something like that. What is the sweetness in that? You know, there are different people who have different conceptions of sweetness.
And for Kshatriyas, you know, heroic declarations of valor, they are sweet. Sometimes there are people who consider very red hot chili as delicious. For others, if they just eat one piece of red hot chili, tears come out of their eyes.
So, there is relativity over there in the human psychology. And for a grieving mother, this sort of declaration can in one way offer relief. So, it says that this is not the only way.
Vichitra, vichitra means in various ways, he, jalpai, in different kinds of speech, priyam, in this way, try to endearingly speak to her in pacifier, santvayam. He offered her relief. Achyuta mitra putraha, achyuta mitra sootaha.
So, soota, soota can refer to, soota refers usually to a charioteer. So, achyuta mitra soota, which means achyuta priya. So, achyuta mitra soota means one who is a friend of achyuta and one who had achyuta as his soota, as his charioteer.
So, Arjuna had this special partha saarthi and he was the soota also. So, that person, who was very dear to Krishna in this way, Arjuna expertly pacified her. Anvadravad damshit ugrdhanva.
Anvadravad, followed damshitaha. He wore his, after speaking thus, he, what did he do? He wore his kavachar, ugrdhanva, he picked up his very deferred, fierce bow, fearsome bow, which is gandiva, kapidbhaja. Now, he has a chariot, whose standard was kapidbhaja, monkey.
So, in that standard, so it was the standard of like a flag, every warrior had his own flag, which had a particular symbol and Arjuna had a monkey as a symbol and during the war of Kurukshetra, Hanuman had entered into that standard and Hanuman had manifested himself and he would roar and opponents would be horrified, terrified, floored, just to see how that monkey on Arjuna’s chariot’s standard also seems to be alive and seems to be so furious. What is this? That is actually Hanuman present. So, he was celebrated as kapidbhaja, Arjuna.
This name comes for him also in the Gita. So, guruputram rathena, and he, anvadravad, he started following the chariot of guruputra, of his spiritual, of his guru, of his martial teacher. So, they were chasing him.
They know that Ashwathama had committed this atrocity. So, he had to be corrected and they went about and Arjuna chased Ashwathama in order to correct the atrocity that he had done. tam apatantam savilakshadurat kumarhodvigna manarathena paradravad pranaparipsururvyam yavad gamam rudrabhayagyathakah tam apatantam The narrative is being told from, till now it has been told, the scene, the camera’s focus, if you say, was on the scene of Arjuna consoling Draupadi and then starting off.
Now, the camera is shifting and now things are being told briefly from Ashwathama’s perspective. And in tam apatantam, on seeing him, savilakshadurat, he saw him coming from far away, prapatantam, he was charging towards him. kumaraha.
kumaraha means one who is the killer of children, kumara, of the princes. kumaraha udvignamana. So, Ashwathama saw that he was, already his conscience was catching up with him and he had realized that he had done a ghastly deed and he was morose already.
But now, prathena paradravat. So, but he immediately realized that, oh, now I am in big trouble. Arjuna is coming in such fury.
He has fled on his chariot, pranaparipsururvyam, for protecting his life, pranaparipsur. With great speed, he went away. yavad gamam rudrabhayagyathakah.
And he fled the way, rudrabhayagyathakah, in fear of Rudra, yadakah. Kah can refer to Brahma or arkah, the word is, if it is a different word over there, arkah, then it can refer to Surya. So, essentially, Ashwathama saw Arjuna charging towards him furiously and he fled.
So, in writing, there are prototypes, there are different metaphors, there are different figures of speech, literary devices which are used, comparisons are used to explain certain points. So, and those who are in that particular culture, who are familiar in that culture, who are familiar to that culture, they can immediately connect. And a lot can be conveyed through one example.
So, for example, if it is said, oh, do not, do you think that, do not act like a Charlie Chaplin. Now, the idea is, do you think you are a Rambo, or whatever. These sort of usages, there are certain images which come in mind, and these usages condense a wealth of meaning with, in brief, are you consider yourself to be a big fighter, are you consider yourself to be a big humorist, big comedian or whatever, whatever you want to say, by one imagery, something very, a lot can be communicated.
So, like that, the way here, Ashwathama was fleeing from Arjuna. Arjuna, that is compared here to Rudra-bhaya-yatha-kaha, that as out of fear of Rudra, Brahma ran. But the point is, there are stories, Prabhupada quotes the stories, that once Brahma became attracted to his daughter, and this was such an atrocious act, that when Rudra came to know about him, he chased after Brahma, what are you doing? And seeing Rudra charging at him, Brahma fled.
So, the idea is that Brahma is supposed to be a righteous person, and for him to act in such an unrighteous way is horrible, and then when he fled, he is not just only fleeing from Shiva, he is also fleeing from his own conscience. Similarly, Ashwathama, at least at the start of the two Kurukshetra wars, he had his attachments, but he was not a vicious person, but now he had acted viciously and he was fleeing in mortal fear of Arjuna. The similarity is not just in fleeing, not just in the speed of fleeing, but in the mentality of the fleer, that a person who is supposed to act promptly had acted atrociously and was therefore fleeing.
So, similarly, the same point is if the word, so sometimes in the Bhagavatam, there are slight differences in various recensions. Sometimes some words can be spelled one way or sometimes the words can be spelled another way. And depending on different recensions, there can be slightly different meanings that can come up.
So, these recensions usually bring about minor differences in meaning. There is nothing major that comes up as a difference. And many times in traditional commentaries that are written, first in the introduction itself, some manuscript analysis is given and said that, okay, these are the sources which have been used to find the manuscript.
And based on that, we have taken these recensions. And sometimes multiple recensions are taken and meanings are described based on multiple recensions also. So, here Prabhupada, and this does not affect the main meaning.
So, here Kaha it can be or it can be Arkaha. Arkaha is a name for Surya. And the story, Prabhupada tells the story also, quoting in the Purport from Vaman Puran, that there was a demon with Dhinamali.
And he was actually, he had been granted a very powerful airplane. And the airplane became very fulgent. So, Surya became angry.
And he burned, he burned and burned the, actually melted the airplane with his violent sun rays. That angered Surya. That angered Shiva and Shiva chased after Surya.
And Surya fled in mortal fear of Shiva. So, like that, whether the word is Kaha or Arkaha, it is only an incidental, incidental literary device used to convey the main point that Ashwathama fled in great fear. Yadasharanam Aatmanam, text 19.
Yadasharanam Aatmanam, Aikshit Shrantavajinam, Astram Brahmashiromene, Aatmatranam Dwijatma Jahan. Yadasharanam, Asharanam, when he saw that he has no other shelter, Aatmanam for himself, Aikshit Shrantavajinam. He was fleeing, but his horses had got tired.
Shrantavajinam. He realized that he could no longer get away from Arjuna. And although Ashwathama was also a good archer, he knew that he was no match to Arjuna in archery.
So, now he was going to be caught and he was going to be punished. And the last ditch method, last ditch effort, he, Aatmatranam, for trying to protect himself, Dwijatma Jahan, Dwijatma Jahan, son of Dwija. What did he do? Astram Brahmashiromene.
He utilized the Brahmashira. Brahmashira is a formidable weapon of Brahma. So, sometimes the Brahmashira is equated to Brahmastra, sometimes the Brahmasatra is, the Brahmashira is considered to be even more powerful than the Brahmastra.
But either way, the point is that it is a very, very powerful weapon. And the Brahmashira, so here the word Brahma does not Brahmashira or Brahmastra, the word Brahma does not necessarily refer to the Devata Brahma. Usually Devata Brahma does not use any weapons.
He is usually in the mode of a Brahmana and he does not engage in warfare. So, when the Brahmastra the word is used, that refers more to the point of Brahma being the highest reality and Brahmastra referring to a weapon which has the most formidable power in that sense. So, Prabhupada in order to make the idea of the Brahmastra familiar to people in modern context, he translates it as nuclear weapon.
Now, Brahmastra does not use the technology, Brahmastra does not use the technology of nuclear fission or anything like that, which is using nuclear weapons. So, Prabhupada is not usually focusing on, he is giving these translations, he does not go to technicalities. He wants to convey the essential meaning and make the translation intelligible for people.
So, just as nuclear weapon, as soon as we hear nuclear weapons or at least in 1970s, 1980s when Prabhupada wrote his commentary at that time with the Cold War going on at its peak, there was a constant fear that any escalation of tensions might trigger the use of weapons of mass destruction, use of nuclear weapons and there might be a nuclear Armageddon, utter destruction of the whole world that may occur. So, nuclear weapons convey an image of lethal weaponry which would cause utter devastation and Prabhupada is wanting to convey the power of the Brahmastra by using that translation. So, he touched salilam, having touched the water, sandadev tat samahitaha, he chanted the hymns and in concentration, ajanan api samharam, without knowing api samharam, how to withdraw, pranakuchra upasthite, he for saving his life being in danger, he pranakuchra upasthite, he because his life was in danger, he felt that his life was in danger and so he shot that weapon.
So, now the point that is being made is that this was a higher power to be invoked. So, there is some sanctification that is done through touching water, through chanting mantras, through concentration of the mind. All that is fine, but what was dangerous was ajanan api samharam.
He did not know how to withdraw the weapon. So, often we can start a sequence of events, but sometimes we start something and then it becomes so complicated, we do not know how to deal with it. And then it becomes a huge, huge, huge mess.
So, the modern times, America decided to discipline the Middle East by overthrowing Saddam Hussein and then in order to have some control over that, but did not know how to deal with the whole situation. So, now from that, the destabilization of the military regimes that happened over there, the monster of ISI emerged and that has come out as a much bigger problem. Of course, I am not making any political statement here about what is right or what is wrong, simply making the point that sometimes when we get into some situation and we think that we know how to fix situations, but if we are not willing to be committed to implementing a solution, then getting into an existing mess, we may end leaving a bigger mess than what was there.
So, here Ashwathama wants to get out of one mess, that is, he does not want to die, he wants to save his own life, but he, because he does not know how to withdraw the weapon, he can end up, it can create a much bigger mess. So, that foreshadowing of the consequence is going to be talked about here and that is going to be further talked about and that is hinted off over here in this verse. So, there is a poetic juxtaposition of word Vishnujishnur.
Vishnujishnur is the name of Arjuna, Vishnujishnur is of course the name of Krishna. So, Vishnujishnur uvachaha. Vishnum, sorry, Vishnumjishnur.
So, Vishnum means unto Vishnum and Jishnur is he spoke. So, uvachaha. So, unto Vishnum, unto Krishna, Jishnum, Arjuna spoke.
What did he speak? That will be mentioned in the previous verse. So, as he released the Brahmastra, the Teja, the effulgence spread far and wide. It was huge, it was gigantic, it was fierce, gigantic it was and it spread in all directions.
It threatened life of people everywhere. On seeing this, Arjuna asked Krishna, what is this? So, imagine that we are chasing after someone and suddenly there is a blinding flash. Normally, we talk of blinding darkness, but there can be blinding brightness also.
Suddenly, if we come out, suddenly, for example, in a highway, if some truck is coming and it suddenly increases their light, then there is a glare which comes and that glare can blind. So, like that Arjuna saw this blinding blaze and he is going to figure out what is this? Where is it coming from? What is the source of this? And he will ask Krishna about what it is and what is to be done about it. So, that we will discuss in our future talks.