Devalok
Legend · 2 tellings · Pan-India

Krishna and the serpent Kaliya

The boy Krishna leaps into the Yamuna pool poisoned by the serpent Kaliya, is bound in his coils while Vrindavan weeps on the bank, then dances on his hoods until the serpent's wives beg for his life, and sends him back to the sea.

Who is in it

Places: Vrindavan, Yamuna, Ramanaka · Texts: Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana, Harivamsha

The story, beat by beat

  1. The water of a pool in the Yamuna is poisoned by Kaliya; cattle and boys who drink die and Krishna revives them.
  2. Krishna climbs a kadamba tree on the bank and leaps into the pool.
  3. Kaliya and his serpents bind and bite him; the cowherds, Nanda and Yashoda come weeping to the bank.
  4. Krishna frees himself and dances on the serpent's hoods until he vomits blood.
  5. The serpent's wives pray for his life; Kaliya says he acted by his nature.
  6. Krishna sends him to the sea, promising that Garuda will spare him when he sees the footprints on his hoods.

childhood poison dance mercy

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Bhagavata Purana 10.15 to 10.17

Pan-India Vaishnava

The pool poisons the cowherds and calves and Krishna brings them back to life with a look. He climbs the kadamba, tightens his cloth and leaps. Kaliya coils round him and Vraja comes to the bank: Yashoda wants to go into the water after him and Balarama, who knows his brother, holds them back. Krishna grows in the coils until the serpent must let him go, climbs onto the hoods and dances on the thousand of them in turn, until Kaliya vomits blood and remembers Narayana. The Naga wives pray at length. Krishna sends the serpent to Ramanaka island and the book adds why Garuda never came here: the sage Saubhari, living in the water, cursed him for eating a fish.

Bhagavata Purana 10.15 to 10.17 (Vedabase)

Primary text (translation)

Vishnu Purana V.7

Pan-India Vaishnava

Krishna goes to the river without Rama and sees the boiling pool with blighted trees. He thinks it his work, as Garuda, that drove Kaliya from Ramanaka, and leaps from the kadamba, slapping his arms. The serpent and hundreds of serpent women bind and bite him. The cowherds run to Vraja; Yashoda stumbles, Nanda and Yashoda faint, the gopis offer to drown themselves. Balarama speaks to Krishna 'in his own character': what is this, O god of gods, the quality of mortal is sufficiently assumed. Krishna smiles, frees himself, bends the middle hood down and dances on it. The wives pray; Kaliya says it is the nature of snakes to be savage, and that his nature was given him by Krishna. He is sent to the sea, Garuda to spare him when he sees the footprints on his brow.

Vishnu Purana V.7, tr. H. H. Wilson (1840)

Sources: Bhagavata Purana 10.15 to 10.17 (Vedabase); Vishnu Purana V.7, tr. H. H. Wilson (1840)

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