Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/204

 was Krishna, he advanced, and, falling at his feet, said, 'Alas, O Krishna! I have, by the most fatal of mistakes, struck you with this arrow; seeing your foot at a distance, I did not properly discern my object, but thought it to be an animal; Oh, pardon my involuntary crime!' Krishna comforted him to the utmost of his power, saying, 'It was no fault of thine; depart, therefore, in peace.' The hunter then humbly kissed his foot, and went sorrowing away. After the hunter was gone, so great a light proceeded from Krishna, that it enveloped the whole compass of the earth, and illuminated all the expanse of heaven. At that instant, an innumerable tribe of devatas, and other celestial beings, of all ranks and denominations, came to meet Krishna; and he, luminous as on that night when he was born in the house of Vasudeva, by that same light pursued his journey between heaven and earth, to the bright Vaikontha or Paradise, whence he had descended. All this assemblage of beings, who had come to meet Krishna, exerted the utmost of their power to laud and glorify him. Krishna soon arrived at the abode of Indra, who was overjoyed to behold him, accompanied him as far as Indra-Loke reached, and offered him all manner of ceremonious observances. When Krishna had passed the limits of Indra's territory, Indra said to him, 'I have no power to proceed any farther, nor is there any admission for me beyond this limit;' so Krishna kindly dismissed him, and went forward alone."

Arjoon, the friend of Krishna, went to Dwaraka, to see in what state Krishna himself might be; when he beheld ''the city in the state of a woman whose husband is recently dead''; and finding neither Krishna nor Balhadur nor any other of his friends there, the whole place appeared in his eyes as if involved in a cloud of impenetrable darkness; nor could he refrain from bursting into tears. The sixteen thousand wives of Krishna, the moment they set their eyes on Arjoon, burst also into a flood of tears, and all at once began the most bitter lamentations; and, in truth, the whole city was so rent with uproar and distraction, that it surpasses description. A few days from this time, Vasudeva, the father of Krishna, died, while fourteen of