The Katyayani Vow and the Chira-Harana Leela

In the month of Margashirsha the young maidens of Vraja kept a vow to Goddess Katyayani, praying for Krishna; the Lord taught them complete surrender and blessed them that their wish would be fulfilled.

In Margashirsha, the first month of the cool Hemanta season, the unmarried young girls of Vraja undertook a sacred vow. For the whole month they ate only simple, pure food, bathed in the Yamuna in the cold dawn, and on its bank shaped an image of Goddess Katyayani from sand, worshipping her with sandal paste, flowers, incense, lamps and offerings. Their one prayer was, "O Goddess Katyayani, O great Mahamaya, please let Krishna, the son of Nanda, become our husband." Each day they walked to the river together and back, singing the glories of the Lord.

According to tradition, on the last day of the vow they left their clothes on the bank and went to bathe in the Yamuna. Krishna came there with his friends, gathered the clothes from the bank and sat in a nearby kadamba tree. He told them that bathing in the river in this way was a fault in the rules of their vow and a disrespect to Varuna, the god of the waters. To complete their vow without blemish, they should offer pranam with folded hands, and then take their clothes. The simple-hearted gopis trusted their beloved and bowed with folded hands, and the Lord, pleased, returned their clothes.

The teachers of the Bhagavatam explain the deep meaning of this leela. The clothes stand for the coverings that remain between the soul and God: shyness, ego, family pride and worldly worry. Krishna taught that nothing can be held back when one seeks him. Joining both hands is complete surrender, in which the devotee leaves even the burden of self-protection entirely to the Lord.

Then Krishna said lovingly, "I know your resolve, and it will surely be fulfilled. The desire of one whose mind is fixed on me does not bind them to the world, just as a roasted seed never sprouts again. In the coming autumn nights your wish will be fulfilled." The gopis returned to Vraja full of joy. This leela teaches that the Lord asks only for complete and sincere surrender, and the fruit of such surrender is the Lord himself.

Source

Shrimad Bhagavatam, Canto 10, ch. 22

Place

Banks of the Yamuna, Vrindavan

Lesson

The Lord asks only for complete and sincere surrender, and the fruit of such surrender is the Lord himself.