1254 Stimad-Bhagavatam [Canto 4, Ch. 27

TEXT 6

TAMATMTNY TAA Waa: |
TATINTT Hererg AS TMTETTA 1 § 1!

tasyam ajanayat putran
puranjanyam puranjanah
Satany ekadasa virad
ayuso ‘rdham athatyagat

tasyam—within her; ajanayat—he begot; putran—sons; purafijanyam—in
Puranijani; puranjanah— King Puranjana; satani— hundreds; ekadasa—cleven;
virat—O King; ayusah—of life; ardham—half; atha—in this way; at yagat—he
passed.
TRANSLATION

The great sage Narada then addressed King Pracinabarhisat: O one whose
life span is great [virat], in this way King Puranjana begot 1,100 sons
within the womb of his wife Puranijani. However, in this business he passed
away half of his life span.

PURPORT

In this verse there are several significant words, the first of which is
ekadasa Satani. Purafijana had begotten 1,100 sons within the womb of his
wife, and thus passed away half of his life. Actually every man follows a
similar process. If one lives for one hundred years at the utmost, in his
family life he simply begets children up to the age of fifty. Unfortunately
at the present moment people do not live even a hundred years; nonethe-
less they beget children up to the age of sixty. Another point is that
formerly people used to beget one hundred to two hundred sons and
daughters. As will be evident from the next verse, King Purafijana not only
begot 1,100 sons but also 110 daughters. At the present moment no one
can produce such huge quantities of children. Instead, mankind is very
busy checking the increase of population by contraceptive methods.

We do not find in Vedic literatures that they ever used contraceptive
methods, although they were begetting hundreds of children. Checking
population by a contraceptive method is another sinful activity, but in this
age of Kali people have become so sinful that they do not care for the
resultant reactions of their sinful lives. King Purafjana lay down with his
