Balarama

The river would not come when she was called. It was spring, the moon was full, and a god who had been drinking sweet liquor from a hollow tree stood on the bank of the Yamuna and ordered her to come closer so that he and his companions could bathe. She stayed where she was. He took the tip of his plough, hooked it into her, and began to drag. If she would not come of her own accord, he told her, she would come in a hundred streams.

That is Balarama, Krishna’s elder brother, and the Bhagavata Purana says the Yamuna still flows through the channels his plough cut that night. The river goddess came out trembling, fell at his feet and asked to be let go. She also told him, in the middle of her apology, who he really was: the one who holds up the whole earth with a single portion of himself.

His birth was strange even by the standards of his family. He began as the seventh pregnancy of Devaki, whose earlier children had been killed by Kamsa. Krishna was to follow him into the same womb. Balarama escaped by never being born to her at all. Vishnu ordered the embryo, which the verse itself calls Shesha, drawn out of Devaki’s womb and placed in the womb of Rohini, who lived among the cowherds. The Bhagavata explains three of his names from this: Sankarshana, the one drawn out, because of the transfer; Rama, because he delights people; and Balabhadra, because of his extraordinary strength. The name the world settled on, Balarama, joins the strength to the delight.

The boys grew up together in Vrindavan, minding calves and inventing games. When a demon in the shape of a mountainous crane swallowed Krishna beside a pool, it was Balarama and the other boys who stood frozen on the bank until their friend was spat out again. Balarama had his own demons to deal with. He caught the ass demon Dhenuka by the hooves, whirled him around with one hand and flung him into the top of a palm. The spinning alone killed him.

Pralamba was cleverer. He slipped into the herd boys’ games disguised as one of them, on a day when the losers had to carry the winners on their backs. Balarama’s team won. Pralamba, who had decided Krishna was too dangerous to try, made sure he was the one who carried Balarama, and set off at a run far past the point where he was supposed to put him down. Balarama made himself as heavy as the cosmic mountain Sumeru. The demon slowed, staggered and dropped his disguise, revealing a huge body glittering with gold ornaments, eyes blazing, hair like fire, teeth reaching up to his brows. For a moment, the text admits, Balarama seemed a little frightened. Then he remembered what was happening and hit the demon on the head with his fist. The skull cracked like a mountain under Indra’s thunderbolt, and Pralamba fell vomiting blood.

The plough is the thing to watch in his stories. Other gods carry weapons that were made to be weapons. Balarama carries a farm tool, and the oldest images of him, from as early as the second or first century BCE, show him holding a ploughshare and a pestle with a canopy of snake hoods over his head. That has led some historians of religion to suspect he began as a god of agriculture. In the stories, the plough mostly ends up being used on things that are not fields.

Hastinapura found this out. When the Kauravas captured Krishna’s son Samba for carrying off Duryodhana’s daughter, Balarama talked his furious kinsmen down from war and went to the Kuru capital himself to negotiate. The Kuru nobles received him with honour and then, when he passed on the Yadava king’s demand for Samba’s release, told him that a shoe was trying to climb onto the head that wears the crown. They turned their backs and went inside. Balarama laughed several times, which is never a good sign, and announced that he would rid the earth of the Kauravas. He dug his plough into Hastinapura and began dragging the whole city toward the Ganges. The streets tilted like a raft at sea. The Kurus came running out with Samba and the princess at the front of the crowd, palms joined, begging him to stop. He did. Duryodhana sent his daughter off with a dowry of elephants, horses and golden chariots. The Bhagavata adds that the city still stands visibly higher on its southern side, facing the river.

In their prayer for mercy the Kurus said the same thing the river had said. They called him the unlimited one with a thousand heads, who carries the globe of the earth on one of them as a pastime. In this telling Balarama is Shesha, the cosmic serpent, living for a while in a man’s body. Britannica notes that later Vaishnava sects who raised Krishna to the rank of supreme god sometimes counted Balarama among the ten avatars of Vishnu instead. Both identifications sit comfortably beside the stories, which are more interested in what he did than in what he was.

What he did, over and over, was drink, laugh, lose his temper and pull things. The stories dwell on his love of wine as much as his strength, and painters always gave him a fair complexion beside his brother’s blue. He was rarely worshipped alone, and even today his images usually stand beside his brother’s, or in the triad he shares with Jagannath and Subhadra.

The end came quietly. In the Mahabharata’s account of the destruction of the Yadavas, after the clan had been slaughtered under a Brahmin’s curse, Krishna went looking for his brother and found him sitting alone in the forest, leaning against a tree, deep in yoga. As Krishna watched, a great white serpent came out of Balarama’s mouth, a naga with a thousand heads, red eyes and a body the size of a mountain. It left the human body behind and went down to the sea. The ocean was waiting to receive it, with the great snakes Vasuki and Takshaka and the river goddesses and the god Varuna, all offering water to wash its feet.

His strength had no ceiling in any story: he could make himself as heavy as a mountain, drag a river into a hundred channels or a city toward the sea. What limited him was his own judgement. A god who answers an insult by trying to drown a city can be talked out of it, and his worshippers seem to have liked him better for being the kind of god who needs to be.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Balarama in Hindu mythology?

Balarama is the elder brother of Krishna and his constant companion in the Bhagavata Purana and the Mahabharata. He is known for his enormous strength and for carrying a plough, and he is identified either with the cosmic serpent Shesha or, in some Vaishnava traditions, with one of the ten avatars of Vishnu.

How was Balarama born?

According to the Bhagavata Purana, Balarama was conceived as Devaki’s seventh pregnancy and then transferred by divine order to the womb of Rohini, out of reach of Kamsa, who had killed Devaki’s earlier children. This transfer is the reason for his name Sankarshana, meaning the one drawn out.

What is Balarama’s weapon?

Balarama’s weapon is the plough, which is why he is called Halayudha. In the Bhagavata Purana he uses it to drag the Yamuna river into a hundred channels and to drag the city of Hastinapura toward the Ganges, and his earliest images, from around the second or first century BCE, show him holding a ploughshare and a pestle.

How did Balarama die?

In the Mahabharata, after the Yadava clan destroyed itself, Krishna found Balarama sitting in yoga in the forest. A white serpent with a thousand heads emerged from his mouth, left the human body and went to the ocean, where the great nagas and the god Varuna received it.

Is Balarama an avatar of Vishnu or Shesha?

Balarama is described both ways. Some legends make him the human incarnation of the serpent Shesha, and in the Bhagavata Purana both the Yamuna and the Kauravas praise him as the thousand-headed one who holds up the earth, while some Vaishnava sects that elevate Krishna count Balarama among the ten avatars of Vishnu.

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Krishna, Vishnu, Jagannath, Naga, Dhenuka, Varuna, Ganga, Mount Meru (Sumeru), Airavata, Indra, Arjuna