Airavata-kunda

The Water for Krishna’s Abhisheka

It all began with an offence. Krishna persuaded the people of Vraja not to make their customary offering to Indra but to honour the hill of Govardhan, which feeds their cows. The offended king of the gods sent upon Vraja the clouds of universal destruction – and for seven days they poured torrents of rain, while Krishna held the lifted hill above the cowherds. When the rain ended, Indra understood whom he had dealt with and came to ask forgiveness. He did not dare to approach alone: Surabhi, the mother of cows, agreed to intercede for him.

Indra prostrated himself at Krishna’s feet, and the demigods arranged an abhisheka – a solemn bathing at which Krishna was proclaimed Govinda. The Srimad-Bhagavatam names the one who brought the water as well:

The Jewelled Vessels

Srila Sanatana Gosvami answers this question in the Brihad-vaishnava-toshani: Airavata lifted the water with his trunk by means of jewelled vessels – otherwise, he writes, so much of the purest water could not have been fetched at once. Srila Jiva Gosvami in the Laghu-vaishnava-toshani repeats the same thought and refers to the Vishnu Purana, where the elephant carries water in a vessel, ringing a jewelled bell as he goes.

In the Gopala-champu this scene is shown entire: at a movement of Indra’s brow Airavata carefully raised his trunk and swiftly brought a jewelled vessel full of the water of the heavenly Ganga. And where this water was kept before the ceremony is told by Rajashekhara dasa: the lake was created by the elephant himself, and here too he kept the water for the abhisheka which Indra performed at Govinda-kunda, and this water came from the heavenly Ganga, known by the name Mandakini.

How many trunks Airavata had the sources count differently. The Garga-samhita gives four:

The Ganga Water Purified by the Dust of Vraja

Sivarama Swami notes that after the abhisheka Krishna often grazed the cows in the shade of Kadambavana and played there with His friends. Wind and rain carried the dust from His feet into the lake, and sometimes Krishna bathed in it Himself. And then, in his words, the water of the heavenly Ganga in this kunda became as sacred as the water of the abhisheka itself, which had flowed down into the Manasi-Ganga.

To this he devoted a separate appendix in his book – a discussion of how the pure becomes purer. The Ganga is sacred because it washed the feet of Vamanadeva; the Yamuna is purer than the Ganga because it is connected with Krishna; and the dust from the feet of Krishna’s devotees purifies water more than the dust of Krishna’s own feet. And Kadambavana is full not only of this dust: the cows, the cowherd boys and the gopis add their own shades to the forest earth. The conclusion is this: the water of Airavata-kunda, like the water of many lakes of Vraja, is liquid chintamani, the stone that fulfils desires. Its touch is able to grant any spiritual perfection – in a bath, in a drop on the head, in a sip.

The Four Kundas of Kadambavana

Airavata-kunda is one of the four kundas of Kadambavana, and each marks its own moment of one and the same story. Sivarama Swami lists them as the most notable places of this forest, which lies between Manikandali and Jatipura.