Aditi's Earrings

Indra, king of the gods, came down to Dwaraka on his great elephant Airavata. He had come to ask a favour, and he was not used to asking.

Krishna welcomed him. Indra began with praise, as a careful guest does, and then he came to the point.

"There is a son of the Earth called Naraka," he said. "He rules the city of Pragjyotisha, and he harms every creature. He carries off the daughters of gods and sages and kings and shuts them up in his palace. He has taken Varuna's umbrella, the one that no rain can pass. He has taken the jewelled peak of Mount Mandara."

He stopped for a moment.

"And he has taken the earrings of my mother Aditi. Now he demands my elephant as well. I have told you everything. You will know what should be done."

Krishna smiled and got up from his seat, and he took Indra by the hand. Then he thought of Garuda, and the great bird was there. Krishna set his wife Satyabhama on Garuda's back, climbed up himself, and flew to Pragjyotisha. Indra went home to heaven to wait.

The country around Naraka's city was strung with nooses, the work of a demon named Muru, and their edges were as sharp as razors. Krishna threw his discus among them and cut them to pieces. Muru sprang up to fight and was killed, and his seven thousand sons burned like moths in the fire of the discus.

Then Naraka himself came out, raining weapons of every kind. Krishna cut him in two.

When the fighting was over, the Earth herself came to Krishna. She was Naraka's mother, and she carried in her hands the two earrings of Aditi.

"Lord," she said, "when you lifted me up in the form of the boar, your touch gave me this son. You gave him to me, and now you have killed him. Take these earrings. Look after his children. And forgive the wrongs that Naraka did."

"So be it," said Krishna.

He freed the captives in the palace and sent them to Dwaraka. He put Varuna's umbrella and the jewelled peak on Garuda's back. Then, with Satyabhama beside him, he flew up to heaven to return what belonged to Aditi.

At the gate of heaven Krishna blew his conch, and the gods came out to greet him. He went straight to the palace of the mother of the gods, whose towers were like white clouds.

He bowed to Aditi. Indra bowed beside him. Krishna put the earrings into her hands and told her that Naraka was dead.

Aditi was very glad. She fixed her mind on him and praised him at length. She said he was the soul of everything that lives, and that she saw only the form with the conch and the discus and did not know the form that lies beyond seeing.

Krishna smiled at her.

"Mother," he said, "be kind to me. Give me your blessing."

"So be it," said Aditi, "just as you wish. As long as you live among mortals, neither gods nor demons shall overcome you."

Then Satyabhama came forward with Indra's queen and bowed, and asked for a blessing of her own.

"You, fair one, shall never know old age," Aditi told her, "and your beauty shall never fade."

On the way out through Indra's garden, Satyabhama saw the Parijata tree and wanted it for her own. That led to a fight with Indra before the day was over, and it has a story to itself.

The Mahabharata does not tell this story for its own sake. It comes up as a warning.

The great war is close. Arjuna sends a message to the court of the Kauravas, and in it he lists the deeds of Krishna, who will ride beside him. He wants Duryodhana to understand what kind of friend the Pandavas have.

The Asuras, Arjuna says, had a city called Pragjyotisha. It was terrible and hard to reach, and no one could bear to attack it. There Naraka, the mighty son of the Earth, kept the jewelled earrings of Aditi. He had carried them off by force.

The gods went against him, with Indra at their head. They were not afraid to die. They still could not defeat him.

So they looked at Krishna. They knew his strength and his weapon that nothing can stop, and they knew why he had been born. They gave the task to him, and he agreed to it.

At the city of Nirmochana he killed six thousand Asuras. He cut the sharp-edged nooses to pieces. He killed Mura and a host of Rakshasas, and he entered the city. There he and Naraka met. When it was over, Naraka lay lifeless on the ground like a karnikara tree torn up by the wind.

Krishna took back the earrings and returned, with beauty and with a fame that would not die.

The gods had watched the battle, and they blessed him on the spot.

"You shall never grow tired in a fight," they said. "Neither the sky nor the waters shall stop your path. No weapon shall pierce your body."

And this, Arjuna tells the Kauravas, is the one whom Duryodhana imagines he can overcome.

In this telling there is no Satyabhama on the bird, the Earth does not come forward, and Aditi does not appear to receive her jewels. The epic has kept only the theft, the fight and the blessing of the gods.

Ask in a Tamil, Kannada, Marathi or Goan home why lamps are lit on the day before the new moon of Deepavali, and you will hear this story with a different ending.

People say that Naraka had won a boon. No one could kill him except his own mother. His mother was the Earth, and he felt quite safe.

But the Earth, they say, had been born again as Satyabhama, the queen of Krishna. In this telling Aditi brings her grief over the stolen earrings to Satyabhama, and it is Satyabhama who is angry first, and who asks to go to the war.

The two of them ride Garuda to Pragjyotisha. Krishna breaks the defences and kills the general Mura. Then Naraka hurls his weapon, and Krishna lets it strike him. He sinks down as if he has fainted. He knows about the boon.

Satyabhama sees her husband fall. She takes up the bow herself and fights Naraka, and so the son meets his end at the hands of his mother after all. Many tellers say her arrows bring him down, and others say Krishna rises and finishes it with the discus while she fights at his side.

Dying, Naraka asks one thing. He wants his death to be remembered each year with lights and with joy. The wish is granted, and the day is called Naraka Chaturdashi.

So before sunrise on that day families rub their heads and bodies with oil and bathe, put on new clothes and light rows of lamps. In Goa huge paper figures of Naraka, stuffed with grass and firecrackers, are burned at dawn, and a bitter berry is crushed underfoot to stand for him. In Tamil Nadu this day, and not the new moon night that follows, is Deepavali itself.