The Padma Purana
by N.A. Deshpande | 1951 | 1,261,945 words | ISBN-10: 8120838297 | ISBN-13: 9788120838291
This page describes the greatness of krishna which is chapter 76 of the English translation of the Padma Purana, one of the largest Mahapuranas, detailling ancient Indian society, traditions, geography, as well as religious pilgrimages (yatra) to sacred places (tirthas). This is the seventy-sixth chapter of the Patala-Khanda (Section On The Nether World) of the Padma Purana, which contains six books total consisting of at least 50,000 Sanskrit metrical verses.
Disclaimer: These are translations of Sanskrit texts and are not necessarily approved by everyone associated with the traditions connected to these texts. Consult the source and original scripture in case of doubt.
Chapter 76 - The Greatness of Kṛṣṇa
[Sanskrit text for this chapter is available]
The lord said:
1-3. Here, hearing that Śiśupāla was killed, Dantavakra came to Mathurā to fight with Kṛṣṇa. Hearing that Kṛṣṇa got into a chariot and came with him to Mathurā. Then he killed him, and having crossed Yamunā, and having gone to Nanda’s abode, he saluted his parents and consoled them. He was embraced by them. He embraced all the old cowherds, consoled them, and pleased all living there by (giving them) many garments and ornaments.
4-6. On the charming sand-bank of Kālindī (i.e. Yamunā), crowded with auspicious trees, he, day and night enjoying sports with the cowherdesses, lived for three nights. In that region, all people like the cowherd Nanda, with their sons and wives, so also beasts, birds and animals, having divine forms, got into an aeroplane and reached the highest place—Vaikuṇṭha. And Śrīkṛṣṇa, having given all the residents of Nanda’s cow-pen his own infallible place, and being praised by hosts of gods, entered the glorious Dvārāvatī.
7-9. There he was everyday worshipped by Vāsudeva, Ugrasena, Saṃkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, Aniruddha, Akrūra etc. He of an omnipresent form, enjoyed on very soft beds, strewn with flowers of the divine trees in the divine, jewelled bowers of creepers, with his queens numbering sixteen thousand and eight. Thus, for the welfare of the gods, for destroying the entire burden of the earth, he descended in the Yadu family, and having destroyed all the demons (and thus) having destroyed the great burden on the earth, having released the immobile and mobile living in Nanda’s abode and at Dvārikā from the bondage of the worldly existence, he established them in his great, eternal, charming abode meditated upon by the meditating saints. Being always waited upon by divine queens etc. Vāsudeva said to all: “Brahman was unseparated like (the particles of) hail and ghee. Freed from the constituents (of the Primordial Matter), he, living in the Prakṛti (the Primordial Matter), melted and went to heaven.”