CHAPTER NINE

Mother Yasoda Binds Lord Krsna

While mother Yasoda was allowing Krsna to drink her breast milk, she
was forced to stop because she saw the milk pan boiling over on the oven.
The maidservants being engaged in other business, she stopped allowing
Krsna to drink from her breast and immediately attended to the over-
flowing milk pan. Krsna became very angry because of His mother’s
behavior and devised a means of breaking the pots of yogurt. Because He
created this disturbance, mother Yasoda decided to bind Him. These
incidents are described in this chapter.

One day, the maidservants being engaged in other work, mother
Yasoda was churning the yogurt into butter herself, and in the meantime
Krsna came and requested her to allow Him to suck her breast milk. Of
course, mother Yasod4 immediately allowed Him to do so, but then she
saw that the hot milk on the oven was boiling over, and therefore she im-
mediately stopped allowing Krsna to drink the milk of her breast and
went to stop the milk on the oven from overflowing. Krsna, however,
having been interrupted in His business of sucking the breast, was very
angry. He took a piece of stone, broke the churning pot and entered a
room, where He began to eat the freshly churned butter. When mother
Yasoda, after attending to the overflowing milk, returned and saw the pot
broken, she could understand that this was the work of Krsna, and
therefore she went to search for Him. When she entered the room, she
saw Krsna standing on the ulikhala, a large mortar for grinding spices.
Having turned the mortar upside down, He was stealing butter hanging
from a swing and was distributing the butter to the monkeys. As soon as
Krsna saw that His mother had come, He immediately began to run away,
and mother Yasoda began to follow Him. After going some distance,
mother Yasoda was able to catch Krsna, who because of His offense was
crying. Mother Yasoda, of course, threatened to punish Krsna if He acted
that way again, and she decided to bind Him with rope. Unfortunately,
when the time came to knot the rope, the rope with which she wanted to
bind Him was short by a distance equal to the width of two fingers. When

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