Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.15.32
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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eka-pāṇinā
—
with a single hand
eka (one) + pāṇi (hand). Gauḍīya: the dual-arm form of Balarāma kills with one hand. The understatement is the līlā's signature — the strength is so abundant that half is sufficient.
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bhrāmayitvā
—
whirling around
Absolutive of causative of √bhram — to spin. Gauḍīya: the whirl is play (līlā), not labor. Demons are dispatched with play-violence; the seriousness is only on the demon's side.
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tṛṇa-rāja-agre
—
into the top of a palm tree
tṛṇa-rāja (king-of-grass, i.e., palm) + agra (top). Beautiful epithet for the palm. Gauḍīya: the palm is called king-of-grass — tall but rootless to grain. Dhenuka is hurled to the height of grass-kingship; even his death is poetic.
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prapadoḥ
—
by the hooves
Dual locative of prapada (forefoot). Balarāma grasped him by the hooves — exactly the limbs Dhenuka used to kick. Poetic justice; the offending instrument becomes the handle of correction.
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tyakta jīvitam
—
giving up his life
tyakta (abandoned) + jīvita (life). Gauḍīya: the demon 'gave up' his life by the whirling — but Gauḍīyas read this also as liberation: contact with Bhagavān at death produces mukti. Dhenuka was killed and saved in one motion.
Balarama seized Dhenukasura (tam) by the hooves (prapadayoh), and whirling him around , threw him in a tala tree (trna rajah).
He grabbed the demon’s feet with one hand and whirled him around with one hand. Prapadoḥ means the tip of the feet. Previously he let the demon strike him in order show that it did not hurt him since he did not even pay attention to it.
Balarāma let the donkey kick him on the chest, to fool him. By this he showed the donkey’s weakness and his own strength. The demon could not succeed in kicking him again because Balarāma grabbed his two feet which were propelled to kill him. The palm tree (tṛnarāja) had a thick trunk and was very tall. The next verse describes it as mahātāla, a giant tāla tree. He threw the demon on the tree to please the cowherds. To show his strength and the demon’s feebleness, he made the trees fall down easily.
- What internal Dhenuka could be ended in one decisive motion if I stopped negotiating with it?
- Where am I expecting a long battle when surrender to the Lord could resolve it quickly?
A child's father, attacked by a dog, grasps it by the legs and spins it into a tree-top — the matter concluded between two beats of a song. Balarāma kills Dhenuka with eka-pāṇi, a single hand, whirling him into the top of a palm. The līlā preserves dignity: the demon meets his end mid-flight, mid-bray, mid-folly. Liberation enters him in motion.
Hiraṇyakaśipu, the king of asuras, was killed not on the ground and not in the air, not by man and not by beast, not by day and not by night — but by Nṛsiṁha on His lap at twilight in a doorway (SB 7.8). The demon's fate-twist was the work of the Lord's mathematics.
Balarāma's whirling of Dhenuka has the same flavor: a demon killed in a way no one would have predicted, in motion rather than at rest. The Bhāgavatam's līlā-pattern is consistent — the Lord's hand finds the impossible angle, and the asura, in his last second, becomes the recipient of mokṣa.
My note
Source: vedabase.io