3.18 · The Battle Between Lord Boar and the Demon Hiraṇyākṣa

Materialistic warmongers are not even afraid to fight with their mightiest enemy, the Personality of Godhead. The demon was very encouraged to learn from Varuṇa that there was one fighter who could actually combat him, and he was very enthusiastic to search out the Supreme Personality of Godhead just to give Him a fight, even though it was predicted by Varuṇa that by fighting with Viṣṇu he would become prey for dogs, jackals and vultures. Since demoniac persons are less intelligent, they dare to fight with Viṣṇu, who is known as Ajita, or one who has never been conquered.

In a previous chapter we have discussed the incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead as Varāha, the boar. While Varāha, with His tusks, engaged in uplifting the submerged earth from the depths of the waters, this great demon Hiraṇyākṣa met Him and challenged Him, calling Him a beast. Demons cannot understand the incarnations of the Lord; they think that His incarnations as a fish or boar or tortoise are big beasts only. They misunderstand the body of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, even in His human form, and they deride His descent. In the Caitanya sampradāya there is sometimes a demoniac misconception about the descent of Nityānanda Prabhu. Nityānanda Prabhu’s body is spiritual, but demoniac persons consider the body of the Supreme Personality to be material, just like ours. Avajānanti māṁ mūḍhāḥ: persons who have no intelligence deride the transcendental form of the Lord as material.

Śrīdhara Svāmī, commenting on this verse, states that although the demon wanted to deride the Personality of Godhead in the form of a boar, actually he worshiped Him in several words. For example, he addressed Him as vana-gocaraḥ, which means “one who is a resident of the forest,” but another meaning of vana-gocaraḥ is “one who lies on the water.” Viṣṇu lies on the water, so the Supreme Personality of Godhead can be properly addressed in this way. The demon also addressed Him as mṛgaḥ, indicating, unintentionally, that the Supreme Personality is sought after by great sages, saintly persons and transcendentalists. He also addressed Him as ajña. Śrīdhara Svāmī says that jña means “knowledge,” and there is no knowledge which is unknown to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Indirectly, therefore, the demon said that Viṣṇu knows everything. The demon addressed Him as surādhama. Sura means “the demigods,” and adhama means “Lord of all there is.” He is Lord of all the demigods; therefore He is the best of all demigods, or God. When the demon used the phrase “in my presence,” the implied meaning was, “In spite of my presence, You are completely able to take away the earth.” Na svasti yāsyasi: “Unless You kindly take this earth from our custody, there can be no good fortune for us.”

The demon used the word abhavāya, which means “for killing.” Śrīdhara Svāmī comments that this “killing” means liberating, or, in other words, killing the process of continued birth and death. The Lord kills the process of birth and death and keeps Himself invisible. The activities of the Lord’s internal potency are inconceivable, but by a slight exhibition of this potency, the Lord, by His grace, can deliver one from nescience. Śucaḥ means “miseries”; the miseries of material existence can be extinguished by the Lord by His internal potency, yoga-māyā. In the Upaniṣads ( Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 6.8) it is stated, parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate. The Lord is invisible to the eyes of the common man, but His energies act in various ways. When demons are in adversity, they think that God is hiding Himself and is working by His mystic potency. They think that if they can find God they can kill Him just by seeing Him. Hiraṇyākṣa thought that way, and he challenged the Lord: “You have done tremendous harm to our community, taking the part of the demigods, and You have killed our kinsmen in so many ways, always keeping Yourself hidden. Now I see You face to face, and I am not going to let You go. I shall kill You and save my kinsmen from Your mystic misdeeds.”

Not only are demons always anxious to kill God with words and philosophy, but they think that if one is materially powerful he can kill God with materially fatal weapons. Demons like Kaṁsa, Rāvaṇa and Hiraṇyakaśipu thought themselves powerful enough to kill even God. Demons cannot understand that God, by His multifarious potencies, can work so wonderfully that He can be present everywhere and still remain in His eternal abode, Goloka Vṛndāvana.

Demons are very much disturbed when devotees worship the Lord in the prescribed ways recommended in the scriptures. In the Vedic scriptures, the neophyte devotees are advised to engage in nine kinds of devotional service, such as to hear and chant the holy name of God, to remember Him always, to chant on beads Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare, to worship the Lord in the form of His Deity incarnation in the temples, and to engage in various activities of Kṛṣṇa consciousness to increase the number of godly persons for perfect peace in the world. Demons do not like such activity. They are always envious of God and His devotees. Their propaganda not to worship in the temple or church but simply to make material advancement for satisfaction of the senses is always current. The demon Hiraṇyākṣa, upon seeing the Lord face to face, wanted to make a permanent solution by killing the Personality of Godhead with his powerful mace. The example of an uprooted tree mentioned here by the demon is very significant. Devotees accept that God is the root of everything. Their example is that just as the stomach is the source of energy of all the limbs of the body, God is the original source of all energy manifested in the material and spiritual worlds; therefore, as supplying food to the stomach is the process to satisfy all the limbs of the body, Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or developing love of Kṛṣṇa, is the sublime method for satisfying the source of all happiness. The demon wants to uproot this source because if the root, God, were to be checked, the activities of the Lord and the devotees would automatically stop. The demon would be very much satisfied by such a situation in society. Demons are always anxious to have a godless society for their sense gratification. According to Śrīdhara Svāmī, this verse means that when the demon would be deprived of his mace by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, not only the neophyte devotees but also the ancient sagacious devotees of the Lord would be very much satisfied.

The Māyāvādī philosopher cannot understand that the Lord has feelings. The Lord is satisfied if someone offers Him a nice prayer, and similarly, God is dissatisfied if someone decries His existence or calls Him by ill names. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is decried by the Māyāvādī philosophers, who are almost demons. They say that God has no head, no form, no existence and no legs, hands or other bodily limbs. In other words, they say that He is dead or lame. All these misconceptions of the Supreme Lord are a source of dissatisfaction to Him; He is never pleased with such atheistic descriptions. In this case, although the Lord felt sorrow from the piercing words of the demon, He delivered the earth for the satisfaction of the demigods, who are ever His devotees. The conclusion is that God is as sentient as we are. He is satisfied by our prayers and dissatisfied by our harsh words against Him. In order to give protection to His devotee, He is always ready to tolerate insulting words from the atheists.

When the Lord was coming out of the water, taking the earth in His arms to deliver it, the demon derided Him with insulting words, but the Lord did not care because He was very conscious of His duty. For a dutiful man there is nothing to fear. Similarly, those who are powerful have no fear of derision or unkind words from an enemy. The Lord had nothing to fear from anyone, yet He was merciful to His enemy by neglecting him. Although apparently He fled from the challenge, it was just to protect the earth from calamity that He tolerated Hiraṇyākṣa’s deriding words.

Those who are demons cannot understand how the Supreme Personality of Godhead floated the earth on water, but to devotees of the Lord this is not a very wonderful act. Not only the earth but many, many millions of planets are floating in the air, and this floating power is endowed upon them by the Lord; there is no other possible explanation. The materialists can explain that the planets are floating by the law of gravitation, but the law of gravitation works under the control or direction of the Supreme Lord. That is the version of Bhagavad-gītā, which confirms, by the Lord’s statement, that behind the material laws or nature’s laws and behind the growth, maintenance, production and evolution of all the planetary systems — behind everything — is the Lord’s direction. The Lord’s activities could be appreciated only by the demigods, headed by Brahmā, and therefore when they saw the uncommon prowess of the Lord in keeping the earth on the surface of the water, they showered flowers on Him in appreciation of His transcendental activity.

The Lord could have chastised the demon immediately while the demon was deriding the Lord with ill words, but the Lord tolerated him to please the demigods and to show that they should not be afraid of demons while discharging their duties. Therefore His toleration was displayed mainly to drive away the fears of the demigods, who should know that the Lord is always present to protect them. The demon’s derision of the Lord was just like the barking of dogs; the Lord did not care about it, since He was doing His own work in delivering the earth from the midst of the water. Materialistic demons always possess large amounts of gold in various shapes, and they think that a large amount of gold, physical strength and popularity can save them from the wrath of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Demons and atheistic persons can go on insulting the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but they forget that they are subjected to the laws of birth and death. They think that simply by decrying the existence of the Supreme Lord or defying His stringent laws of nature, one can be freed from the clutches of birth and death. In Bhagavad-gītā it is said that simply by understanding the transcendental nature of God one can go back home, back to Godhead. But demons and atheistic persons do not try to understand the nature of the Supreme Lord; therefore they remain in the entanglement of birth and death.

The demon should have known that God cannot be driven out of any place, for He is all-pervading. Demons think of their possessions as their property, but actually everything belongs to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who can take anything at any time He likes.

A demon may be a great soldier and commander of a large number of infantry, but in the presence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead he is powerless and is destined to die. The Lord, therefore, challenged the demon not to go away but to fulfill his promised word to kill Him.

A cobra is very fierce before ordinary persons, but before an enchanter who can play with him, he is a plaything. Similarly, a demon may be very powerful in his own domain, but before the Lord he is insignificant. The demon Rāvaṇa was a fierce figure before the demigods, but when he was before Lord Rāmacandra he trembled and prayed to his deity, Lord Śiva, but to no avail.

The example is given herein that the perfect yogī can overcome a deathblow although it is offered by the laws of nature. It is useless for a demon to beat the transcendental body of the Lord with a powerful mace, for no one can surpass His prowess. Those who are advanced transcendentalists are freed from the laws of nature, and even a deathblow cannot act on them. Superficially it may be seen that a yogī is attacked by a deathblow, but by the grace of the Lord he can overcome many such attacks for the service of the Lord. As the Lord exists by His own independent prowess, by the grace of the Lord the devotees also exist for His service.

Haryakṣa is another name for Hiraṇyākṣa, the demon.

Here the earth planet is called ilā. This earth was formerly known as Ilāvṛta-varṣa, and when Mahārāja Parīkṣit ruled the earth it was called Bhārata-varṣa. Actually, Bhārata-varṣa is the name for the entire planet, but gradually Bhārata-varṣa has come to mean India. As India has recently been divided into Pakistan and Hindustan, similarly the earth was formerly called Ilāvṛta-varṣa, but gradually as time passed it was divided by national boundaries.

The fight between the Lord, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and the demon is compared to a fight between bulls for the sake of a cow. The earth planet is also called go, or cow. As bulls fight between themselves to ascertain who will have union with a cow, there is always a constant fight between the demons and the Supreme Lord or His representative for supremacy over the earth. Here the Lord is significantly described as yajñāvayava. One should not consider the Lord to have the body of an ordinary boar. He can assume any form, and He possesses all such forms eternally. It is from Him that all other forms have emanated. This boar form is not to be considered the form of an ordinary hog; His body is actually full of yajña, or worshipful offerings. Yajña (sacrifices) are offered to Viṣṇu. Yajña means the body of Viṣṇu. His body is not material; therefore He should not be taken to be an ordinary boar.

Brahmā is described in this verse as svarāṭ. Actually, full independence is exclusive to the Lord Himself, but as part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, every living entity has a minute quantity of independence. Each and every one of the living entities within this universe has this minute independence, but Brahmā, being the chief of all living entities, has a greater potential of independence than any other. He is the representative of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and has been assigned to preside over universal affairs. All other demigods work for him; therefore he is described here as svarāṭ. He is always accompanied by great sages and transcendentalists, all of whom came to see the bullfight between the demon and the Lord.

There are two classes of living entities: one is called sura, or the demigods, and the other is called asura, or the demons. Demons are generally fond of worshiping the demigods, and there are evidences that by such worship they get extensive power for their sense gratification. This later proves to be a cause of trouble to the brāhmaṇas, demigods and other innocent living entities. Demons habitually find fault with the demigods, brāhmaṇas and innocent, to whom they are a constant source of fear. The way of the demon is to take power from the demigods and then tease the demigods themselves. There is an instance of a great devotee of Lord Śiva who obtained a boon from Lord Śiva that the head of whomever he touched with his hand would come off its trunk. As soon as the boon was offered to him, the demon wanted to touch the very head of Lord Śiva. That is their way. The devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead do not, however, ask any favor for sense gratification. Even if they are offered liberation, they refuse it. They are happy simply engaging in the transcendental loving service of the Lord.

No one is unhappy when a serpent is killed. It is a practice among village boys to catch a serpent by the tail and play with it for some time and then kill it. Similarly, the Lord could have killed the demon at once, but He played with him in the same way as a child plays with a snake before killing it. Brahmā requested, however, that since the demon was more wicked and undesirable than a serpent, there was no need to play with him. It was his wish that he be killed at once, without delay.

Thus end the Bhaktivedanta purports of the Third Canto, Eighteenth Chapter, of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, entitled “The Battle Between Lord Boar and the Demon Hiraṇyākṣa.”