Interpreting Violence: Commentaries on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s Narration of the Animal Massacre in the Khāṇḍava Forest: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

Even amidst the ubiquitous violence of the Mahābhārata, the episode of the burning of the Khāṇḍava forest, narrated at the end of the Ādi-parvan (1.214-25), stands out as distinctively gruesome. It is a story of unbridled violence, not between rival warriors on a battlefield, but against nature.1 As Agni, the fire-god, burns the forest down, Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna assist by fighting off the rain-god Indra and slaughtering the animals that attempt to flee the firestorm.2 A central passage, well rendered in all its ghastliness by van Buitenen, reads, “As the Khāṇḍava was burning, the creatures in their thousands leaped up in all ten
directions, screeching their terrifying screams. Many were burning in one spot, others were scorched—they were shattered and scattered mindlessly, their eyes abursting” (1973: 417)