How do we make sense of the Bhagavatam statement that Chitraketu had ten million wives? Is it a sign of lack of faith if we are troubled by such questions?
Transcript
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Question, how do we make sense of the Srimad Bhagavatam statement that Chitraketu Maharaj had 10 million wives? Also, is it a sign of lack of faith if figures like this keep troubling us and keep creating doubts in our hearts? Answer, it is not necessarily a sign of lack of faith, it could possibly be a sign of lack of focus in understanding the message, the central message and the core style of the Srimad Bhagavatam. It is a perfectly natural and logical question to ask, how can a human being have 10 million wives? So, it is a sign of intelligence, not a lack of faith. The Srimad Bhagavatam is a poetry and as a poetry, it often uses various figures of speech, it uses metaphors, similes.
So for example, we have statement like Mukha Padma, so literally speaking the word Mukha Padma would mean face lotus. Now the implication is the face is like a lotus, so when there is a simile, the word like is used, when there is a metaphor, there is no like used over there, so Mukha Padma is a metaphor. So like that, there are many poetic expressions that are used and in the similes, metaphors, the important point is not the precision but the beauty of expression.
Sushila Prabhupada gives the figure of 10 million but he doesn't necessarily state that we have to believe that this 10 million figure is literal, he just gives that as a statement and moves forward from there. Dasya Sahasranam Sahasrani, that is the precise word in the specific verse of Srimad Bhagavatam which is 6.40, 6.11, so literally speaking it would mean Dasya Sahasranam Sahasrani, so Sahasra is 1000, 1000 and Dasya is 100, so 1000, 1000, 10 would become 10 million. So now we know from our daily experience that it is impossible for any person to interact with 10 million people simultaneously, what to speak of have a lifelong relationship as a husband wife with them.
So then we have two basic alternatives to understand this, one is that Chitraketu Maharaj is living in some other realm, some other kind of universe where time, space, persons and bodies don't function the way we experience them to. So this possibility is also substantiated by the fact that the Bhagavatam doesn't talk only about the earthly planet, it talks about heavenly planets and some pastimes are from other yugas, some may be from other universes also. So the Srimad Bhagavatam is focusing on a spiritual theme that is being developed from the first verse to the last verse and it is that spiritual theme of pure devotion and the beauty and the attractiveness of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the futility of everything else that is being gradually developed.
So within the internal flow of the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Chitraketu Maharaj pastime indicates the futility of material attachment, especially the futility of the desire for happiness through love and relationships independent of Krishna. So for this purpose Chitraketu Maharaj, Shukadeva Goswami can very well tell a story from some other universe which illustrates this point and so in some other universe it might be possible that this has happened, that one person can have that many spouses but the other possibility given the fact that the figure is impossible for us to conceive of in normal relationships, polygamy was common especially for Kshatriyas in the Vedic culture because at that time the number of women was often more, women needed to be protected and Kshatriyas being passionate also had this scriptural allowance for having many wives but such a number is not humanly possible. So the other alternative could be that this is just a, this is a figure given as a poetic expression as an expression of a figure of speech to drive home that Chitraketu had a very large, an extraordinarily unusually large number of wives but in spite of having such a large number of wives still he could not beget a child and that is the central message of the Srimad Bhagavatam and of this particular pastime that relationships that are not God-centered, that are based on material conceptions and bodily attachments ultimately lead to misery before one can attain happiness in that relationship and after one attains happiness and loses that happiness either way.
So to demonstrate that point it could be that Chitraketu Maharaj had a large number of queens and in spite of that he couldn't, he couldn't gain happiness. So now since our Acharyas have not commented either way explicitly, then we are open to adopt whichever explanation we find suitable. So the scriptures are not meant to be accepted by rejecting human intelligence, in fact human intelligence is used to understand scriptures as far as it can go and when it cannot go beyond a particular point, for example when we talk directly about the spiritual world and Krishna's inconceivable potency, then we accept that as a limitation of the human intelligence but in this case Chitraketu is not described as, obviously he is not incarnation and at this particular time he is a king, it is not that he is any supernatural being.
So therefore the second alternative that it could be a figure of speech is also perfectly tenable. So either way the important message of the Srimad Bhagavatam is godless attachments lead to frustration and that's why I started by saying that if we get questions like this about some facts and figures that are given in the Srimad Bhagavatam, then we need to understand that we might not be having the right focus while studying the Srimad Bhagavatam. We don't study the Srimad Bhagavatam primarily for facts and figures, we study it for understanding eternal values and principles and how they are relevant to our lives.
So the eternal value and principle that is being taught about over here is this pure love of God and the futility of everything apart from that, so we can imbibe that in our lives also and see how our worldly attachment that are not God-centered will lead to suffering for us. Beyond that there is not much reason for us to spend too much time in analyzing these things. Sri Prabhupada elsewhere in the first canto of Srimad Bhagavatam in chapter 10, one of the last purports, he states that when Lord Krishna is traveling across the country from after installing the Pandavas as kings, he is coming back from Hastinapur towards Dwaraka, so Srila Prabhupada just explains that some geologists may try to find out which is the way that he actually came along and Prabhupada writes over there that we do not actually profit by this kind of discussion because the earth, so he says that the changing universe has different phases of geological development and we may leave the matter for expert geologist research.
So Srila Prabhupada is basically quite nonchalant in his approach to the research into the geography of the Bhagavatam, so the point here is again that he says we are simply satisfied that Lord Krishna has actually reached Dwaraka and now he will be continuing his pastimes. So therefore we should focus on this important principle that the Srimad Bhagavatam is here to teach us devotional service, if we can get some additional information from that which is also interesting, which is also relevant, which is understandable for us and applicable for us, then we can also use that additional information, but it is not for that additional information that we study Srimad Bhagavatam and sometimes if certain details do not seem to make sense for us, then we do not have to dwell on those details, so the questions when we get details like this are natural and how do we deal with those questions, we try to get answers when it is possible logically for us and beyond that we understand that this is not the thrust of the Srimad Bhagavatam, maybe it is from a different age to actually assume that because something does not seem rational to us, it is mythological, is also actually a leap of faith, because it is not just the, it is not just, it does not require to faith, it does not, faith is required not just only to believe what we have not experienced, it also requires faith when we assume that what we have experienced is the only way things will always be, so it is not that it is only faith one way, so the laws of physics as we currently pursue them are not necessarily the defining criteria for rationality, when we assume that our current experience and the laws that we are extrapolated based on them are what constitutes rationality, then we are actually doubling, tripling our present capabilities and assuming that we know everything about the universe or that there is nothing in the universe that will be contrary to what we have till now found out about the universe, so either way the principle is we need to focus on what is central in the Srimad Bhagavatam and that is the learning of the devotional principles and if we have questions like this, we can always ask those questions and seek out answers that help us keep, put our mind to peace and help us to get along with the understanding, relishing and applying the real message of Srimad Bhagavatam which is the message of developing pure love of Krishna, thank you.