Text 37
tan māśu jahi vaikuṇṭha
pāpmānaṁ mṛga-lubdhakam
yathā punar ahaṁ tv evaṁ
na kuryāṁ sad-atikramam
tat — therefore; mā — me; āśu — quickly; jahi — please kill; vaikuṇṭha — O Lord of Vaikuṇṭha; pāpmānam — the sinful; mṛga-lubdhakam — hunter of deer; yathā — so that; punaḥ — again; aham — I; tu — indeed; evam — thus; na kuryām — may not do; sat — against saintly persons; atikramam — transgression.
Therefore, O Lord of Vaikuṇṭha, please kill this sinful hunter of animals immediately so he may not again commit such offenses against saintly persons.
Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura explains that the fratricidal battle of the Yadu dynasty and the hunter’s attack upon Lord Kṛṣṇa are clearly activities of the Lord’s internal potency for the purpose of fulfilling the Lord’s pastime desires. According to the evidence, the quarrel among the members of the Yadu dynasty occurred at sunset; then the Lord sat down on the bank of the Sarasvatī River. It is stated that a hunter then arrived with the intention of killing a deer, but it is highly unlikely — when more than 560 million warriors had just been killed in a great uproarious battle and the place had been flooded with blood and strewn with corpses — that a simple hunter would somehow come along trying to kill a deer. Since deer are by nature fearful and timid, how could any deer possibly be on the scene of such a huge battle, and how could a hunter calmly go about his business in the midst of such carnage? Therefore, the withdrawal of the Yadu dynasty and Lord Kṛṣṇa’s own disappearance from this earth were not material historical events; they were instead a display of the Lord’s internal potency for the purpose of winding up His manifest pastimes on earth.