Bewildering Pastimes 85

down to this material world to become His enemies and fight with Him.
For example, the Lord descended to kill HiranyakaSipu and Hiranydksa.
Should we think that these were ordinary living entities? No, they were
the great devotees Jaya and Vijaya, who came to this world because
Krsna wanted to fight. In the Vaikuntha world, the spiritual world, there
is no possibility of fighting, because everyone there engages in Krsna’s
service. With whom will He fight? Therefore He sends some devotee in
the garb of an enemy and comes here to this material world to fight with
him. At the same time, the Lord teaches us that becoming His enemy is
not very profitable and that it is better to become His friend. Kuntidevi
therefore says, na veda kaScid bhagavams cikirsitam: ‘“No one knows the
purpose of Your appearance and disappearance.’ Tavehamdnasya nrnam
vidambanam: ‘‘You are in this world just like an ordinary human being,
and this is bewildering.”

Because Krsna sometimes appears like an ordinary man, people some-
times cannot believe or understand His activities. They wonder, ‘‘How
can God become an ordinary person like us?’’ But although Krsna some-
times plays like an ordinary person, in fact He is not ordinary, and
whenever necessary He displays the powers of God. When sixteen thou-
sand girls were kidnapped by the demon Bhaumiasura, they prayed to
Krsna, and therefore Krsna went to the demon’s palace, killed the
demon, and delivered all the girls. But according to the strict Vedic
system, if an unmarried girl leaves her home even for one night, no one
will marry her. Therefore when Krsna told the girls, “Now you can safely
return to your fathers’ homes,”’ they replied, ‘‘Sir, if we return to the
homes of our fathers, what will be our fate? No one will marry us, be-
cause this man kidnapped us.”’

‘*Then what do you want?”’ Krsna asked. The girls replied, ‘‘We want
You to become our husband.”’ And Krsna is so kind that He immediately
said yes and accepted them.

Now, when Krsna brought the girls back home to His capital city, it is
not that each of the sixteen thousand wives had to wait sixteen thousand
nights to meet Krsna. Rather, Krsna expanded Himself into sixteen
thousand forms, constructed sixteen thousand palaces, and lived in each
palace with each wife.

Although this is described in Srimad-Bhdgavatam, rascals cannot
understand this. Instead they criticize Krsna. ‘‘He was very lusty,”’ they
say. ‘‘He married sixteen thousand wives.’ But even if He is lusty, He is
unlimitedly lusty. God is unlimited. Why sixteen thousand? He could
marry sixteen million and still not reach the limits of His perfection. That
