Bhaktivedanta Narayana Gosvami
From the book “Sri Vraja-maṇḍala-parikramā”:
Kṛṣṇa and His sakhās began to drag the grinding mortar, and by so doing, touched and delivered Kuvera’s sons, who had been cursed in a previous life to become trees. This pastime is described in detail in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (Tenth Canto, Chapters Nine and Ten).
Mother Yaśodā had tied Kṛṣṇa to the mortar right here in Nanda-bhavana, and the place where Nalakuvera and Maṇigrīva were delivered lies just outside.
Rajashekhara Dasa
From the book “Chaurasi-kosa Vraja Mandala Parikrama”:
The Bhakti-ratnakara says, “Here mother Yashoda tied Krishna to a grinding mortar which He accepted as great fun. This sacred place is called Yamalarjuna-bhanjana-tirtha. The wonderful kunda situated here has very pure water. By fasting and taking bath in this kunda one accrues unlimited fruits and becomes worshipable on Indraloka.” This is the famous site of the Damodara-lila where baby Krishna, who was tied to a grinding mortar, caused the two yamalarjuna trees to come crashing down. When Lord Chaitanya reached this spot during His parikrama, He became exceedingly blissful as He relished Krishna’s pastime of breaking the two trees. The Chaitanya-charitamrita says, “Shri Chaitanya then went to Shrivana, Lohavana and then to Mahavana and saw Gokula, the place of Krishna’s childhood pastimes. Upon seeing the place where the twin arjuna trees were broken by Lord Krishna, Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was moved to great ecstatic love.” It appears that Lord Chaitanya visited Gokula three times during His pilgrimage to Vraja. In the verse above from the Chaitanya-charitamrita it says that Lord Chaitanya arrived at Gokula Mahavana from Lohavana on His parikrama of Vraja. The Bhakti-ratnakara it says that when Lord Chaitanya first arrived in Vraja from Puri, He arrived at Gokula having passed through Renuka Grama while on His way to Mathura. The Chaitanya-mangala says that after seeing all the holy places of Mathura guided by the sanodiya-brahmana Krishna Dasa, Lord Chaitanya was taken to see Gokula Mahavana. Therefore it appears from these references that Lord Chaitanya visited Gokula on three separate occasions during His pilgrimage to Vrindavana Dhama.
The Damodara-lila Pastime
One day, mother Yashoda was churning yogurt and because Krishna was feeling hungry, He came there and indicated that He wanted to drink mother Yashoda’s breast milk. Stopping her churning, Yashoda Mayi sat Krishna on her lap and began happily feeding Krishna with her breast milk. Just then she noticed that a pot of milk on the fire was about to boil over and she immediately put Krishna down and jumped up to remove the pot. Krishna became extremely upset that His mother had interrupted Him drinking her breast milk to attend to the fire, and in a tantrum, picked up a stone and hurled it at a pot containing freshly churned butter, breaking it to pieces. Krishna then took a handful of butter and hid nearby while He ate the stolen butter.
When Yashoda Mayi returned, she could not see her little darling anywhere and then noticed the broken butter pot and soon realized what had transpired. Taking a stick in her hand, Yashoda began searching for her naughty son but could not find Him anywhere. While searching, she entered a room where the grinding mortar (utkhal) was kept and found Krishna sitting on the upturned mortar feeding butter from an overhanging pot to all the monkeys. On seeing His mother in an angry mood and carrying a stick, Krishna ran away as fast as He could with mother Yashoda chasing after Him. Krishna began running here and there with mother Yashoda close on His heels. However, Krishna was very fast and mother Yashoda was very slow, due to her large breasts and heavy hips, and very soon became tired. Her hair loosened and her flower garland scattered, but she eventually managed to catch hold of her mischievous child. Seeing the fear in Krishna’s eyes, Yashoda threw away the stick but decided that she would bind her naughty son to the grinding mortar as a punishment for His bad behavior.
In Indian villages, this practice of binding badly behaved children with a rope, instead of beating them, is a common practice. Mother Yashoda then brought a rope to bind Krishna, but the rope was too short. Taking some more rope and joining it, Yasoda again tried to bind Krishna to the grinding mortar, but again the rope was too short. Yashoda once again brought some more rope, but again it was still too short. This went on a few times and mother Yashoda was becoming bewildered. When Krishna saw that mother Yashoda was tired and also bewildered in her attempts to tie Him up, He therefore allowed her to tie the rope around His waist and then she tied the rope to the heavy grinding mortar.
The Gaudiya Vaishnava acharyas have stated with regard to this episode that factually, no one can easily bind the Supreme Personality of Godhead, even if He is appearing as a small helpless child in the house of Yashoda Mayi. After she had tied Krishna to the grinding mortar, mother Yashoda went about the rest of her household duties, quite unmindful of what might happen next. However, Krishna was not ready to remain idly sitting tied to a grinding mortar and exhibiting unbelievable strength for a little boy, He began to crawl along the floor dragging the large and extremely heavy mortar behind Him. As Krishna crawled along the ground, he crawled between two large arjuna trees in the courtyard, but as Krishna easily went through the small gap between the trees, the large mortar was too big and got wedged between the two trees. When Krishna pulled even harder, the two trees suddenly came crashing down. At that moment, two effulgent beings appeared from the two trees and prostrated themselves before Krishna while offering prayers.
These two effulgent beings were the celestial brothers Nalakuvara and Manigrivara, the two wayward sons of the demigod Kuvera. In their former life, they had been drinking strong liquor and in a drunken state were sporting naked in a river with young girls. While in such a drunken stupor and completely naked, the brothers shamelessly appeared before Shrila Narada Muni, who was passing nearby. In order to save them, Narada cursed the two brothers to stand naked as trees for a thousand years until Krishna would appear in Gokula, when they would be eventually redeemed by the grace of the Lord. By the mercy of Narada, and after a long tapasya as trees, the two brothers had now come to their senses and were also able to have darshana of the Supreme Personality of Godhead standing there before them. After glorifying Krishna and offering their most heart-felt prayers to the Lord, the two brothers paid their humble obeisances by touching their heads to the ground, and after circumambulating Krishna, they departed for their own abode known as Alakapuri in the heavenly realm.
After hearing the tumultuous sound made by the two large arjuna trees when they snapped and came crashing to the ground, everyone came running to the spot including Nanda and Yashoda and all the cowherd men. They could not understand what caused the two great trees to suddenly fall down. Nanda untied Krishna from the mortar and some of the elderly gopis took Him back to Yashoda’s residential quarters. Nanda Maharaja and the cowherd men believed that the toppling of the twin arjuna trees must be the work of demons, although some small children playing nearby said that Krishna had actually done it. Some of the cowherd men told Nanda that his son Krishna was not an ordinary boy and possessed uncommon strength; saying that they also believed it was possible that Krishna could have done it. After this disturbing incidence and due to the constant fear of demons attacking Gokula, Nanda Maharaja, in consultation with his elder brother and advisor Upananda and the other cowherd men, decided to leave Gokula and move their residences to the forest of Vrindavana on the opposite side of the Yamuna River. The Damodara-lila and the felling of the twin arjuna trees, more or less brought to a close Krishna’s transcendental pastimes at Gokula. The Damodara-lila also marked the end of Krishna’s pastimes as a baby boy, known as His kaumara-lila, or childhood-pastimes. The childhood pastimes of Krishna at Gokula, where He lived up to the age of three years and four months are also referred to as Krishna’s bala-lila. The Sanskrit word ‘bala’ has a number of meanings and in this case it means ‘little one’ and refers to a ‘baby’ or a small ‘child’ who is still an infant.
