A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavatham : Ch-4. Part-7.
4: The Stories of Siva and Sati, and of Rishabhadeva and Bharata :
Part-7.
Sri Krishna said, “You are a blessed man to have that vision. It was Bhagavan Sankara himself, invisibly moving in the battlefield to help you. Otherwise, even with all your archery, with all your might and mane, with all your knowledge and power, do you believe that you can face people like Bhishma, Drona and Karna? They are all a hundred times stronger than you. Siva, in his compassion, came uninvited to bless you because of your goodness. He did not engage in battle, and did not come to wage war with the Kurus, but his very presence was enough to paralyse the strength of all the Kurus.
The odour emanating from his body was enough to cow down everybody and make them lose all their strength. Such is the glory of Siva, the great Sankara Bhagavan; and you had his darshan. Blessed you are, Arjuna! He is Ashutosh—immediately pleased. Ask, and it is given immediately. You did not call him, but he knew that you required help. Unsolicited, the great master, the great god, came to you. This is Tripurari, Mahadeva, Sankara, Rudra, Siva. He was in the air, moving about without touching the ground. His blessing is upon you.”
Here we have the central issue, practically, of the Fourth Skandha of the Srimad Bhagavata—among many other things, into which we will not enter here due to paucity of time.
We turn to the Fifth Skandha, which engages itself in the description of cosmic geography, and describes the denizens of the various planes and existences. It is not the geography that we read in schools and colleges, but the cosmic geography of the planes of existence, all which is given in majestic Sanskrit prose. The whole of the Srimad Bhagavata is in poetry; but here the author, Bhagavan Vyasa, turns his attention to majestic Sanskrit prose, which is a beauty in itself. A hard nut to crack is that style of Sanskrit prose found in the Fifth Skandha of the Srimad Bhagavata.
Swami Krishnananda
To be continued ...
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