The jewel that produced gold each day, and the false accusation Krishna walked into a cave to clear

The accusation

The rumour reached the palace gate before the sun was fully up. The king had killed a man. The king had killed a man for a jewel.

The man was Prasena, a young Yadava nobleman, found two days earlier deep in the forest, his body torn open, his horse dead beside him, the gold chain ripped from his neck. The jewel he had been wearing was gone. The grief-stricken elder brother, Satrajit, had been telling the same line in every market square: the king coveted the stone, and now my brother lies in the forest, and the stone is gone.

Krishna was, at this point, not just a god in human form. He was a working monarch, with allies and enemies and a court that watched. An accusation of murder for theft, against the king, was the kind of poison that would not be cleared by a denial alone. If he simply said I did not do it, half the city would always wonder.

He did not deny it. He saddled a horse, picked up three trackers, and rode out to find what had actually happened.

The jewel that started it

To understand why Satrajit was sure his king had killed his brother, you have to know what the stone was.

A few seasons earlier, Satrajit had been performing an unusually intense austerity, fasting through summer noons, chanting the sun-hymns at the hour of greatest heat. Surya himself had come down, visibly, as a being of golden light, and given him a jewel called the Syamantaka.

The jewel had two properties. It hung from a chain bright enough that no one could look directly at it. And every morning, by some grace neither priest nor jeweller could explain, the Syamantaka produced eight bharas of gold, roughly a hundred kilograms of bullion, out of nothing. As long as a virtuous person wore it in a virtuous land, it also kept that land free of plague and untimely death.

Satrajit wore it into court. Everyone, including Krishna's elder brother Balarama, was startled by the brightness. Krishna, who saw everything, suggested gently that such a jewel would be better held in the royal treasury, where its blessing could extend to the whole kingdom. The nobleman refused, politely but firmly. It was given to me. I will keep it. Krishna did not argue. He let it pass.

But the man walked out of court convinced that his king coveted the stone.

Some weeks later, Prasena had asked to wear the jewel on a hunt. He did not return. Search parties found his body. Lion tracks were all around. The stone was gone.

The accusation moved through Dwaraka in a single afternoon.

Walking the evidence

Krishna and his trackers reached the place of the killing. They found the body. They found the lion tracks. They followed the lion tracks. After some distance the tracks stopped, and beside them lay the body of the lion itself, killed by a powerful hand-blow. From that point onward there were footprints, enormous, broad, the prints of a creature larger than a man. The footprints led toward a hill, and into a cave.

Krishna told his companions to stay outside. He went in alone.

The cave was dark. He walked deep, past pillars of stone, into a chamber where there was lamplight. In the chamber, a young woman was rocking the cradle of a child. Above the cradle, suspended on a thread, hung the Syamantaka, glowing softly so that the child could play with the light.

The young woman saw him and gave a small startled cry. Before she could speak, a deep voice came from the back of the cave, a voice that shook the stone.

Who dares enter?

Out of the darkness came a creature taller than two men, broad as a doorway, with the face of a great bear and the bearing of a king. This was Jambavan, the same bear-king who, in the previous yuga, had served Lord Rama in the Ramayana, who had been blessed with strength enough to live across ages. He had retired with his daughter Jambavati into this cave. The lion that killed Prasena had wandered into his territory carrying a shining stone. Jambavan had killed the lion, taken the stone, and given it to his daughter to amuse her infant nephew.

He saw an unfamiliar man in his cave and assumed a thief. He attacked.

Twenty-eight days

The Bhagavata says simply: they fought for twenty-eight days and twenty-eight nights.

It was hand-to-hand combat in the chamber and in the corridors of the cave. They wrestled, they boxed, they threw each other into stone walls. The bear-king was the strongest creature alive in his age. Krishna was the avatar of Vishnu walking the earth as a man. Each blow Jambavan struck would have killed a tiger. Krishna absorbed and returned them. Each blow Krishna struck would have shattered a mountain. Jambavan stood and came again.

Krishna's companions, waiting outside, eventually concluded that he must be dead. They returned to Dwaraka with the news. The city went into mourning. Satrajit, in private, may have felt the cold weight of what his accusation had begun.

By the twenty-eighth day the bear-king was, for the first time in his long life, tired. He stopped, panting, and looked at the dark figure across from him. He had never met a being whose strength matched his. And he remembered.

He remembered being told, long ago, in the previous yuga, by his Lord Rama, that in your next life you will see me again, and you will know me by a feat of strength.

He fell to his knees. Are you Rama, returned?

Krishna nodded. He placed his hand on Jambavan's head, the touch of recognition between an old servant and the same Lord come back in a new form. Jambavan wept.

What was given that day

Jambavan had only one thing to offer that was worthy of the situation. He brought his daughter forward, joined her hand to Krishna's, and gave her in marriage. He took the Syamantaka from above the cradle and handed it over. Take her. Take the stone. Both have always been yours. We only kept them safe.

Krishna accepted both. He walked out of the cave into a world that thought he was dead, and rode home.

The return

When Krishna arrived back in Dwaraka, the mourning city went into shock. He went directly to Satrajit's house. He laid the Syamantaka on a cloth at the man's feet, in full view of the assembled court. He said, calmly, Here is your jewel. Your brother was killed by a lion. The lion was killed by Jambavan. The jewel was kept safely. I have brought it home.

The man who had spent weeks publicly accusing the king of murder was undone. The shame was complete and there was no way to hide from it. He fell at Krishna's feet. Take the jewel. Take my daughter Satyabhama also, in marriage, as my apology and my penance.

Krishna took Satyabhama in marriage. But he returned the jewel. Keep it. Wear it well. It has already cost a brother. Let it not also be the price of your daughter.

Satrajit kept the Syamantaka. The city ate well. The kingdom prospered.

This single episode brought Krishna two of his eight chief queens, one from the wild and one from the court, one earned by twenty-eight days of fighting and one given as expiation. When he was accused, Krishna did not call witnesses. He did not appeal to his miracles. He did not say I am the Lord, how dare you. He walked the evidence. The clearing of a name in this story is done not by argument but by feet on the ground, and the jewel was returned to the man who had wronged him because Krishna had never wanted it in the first place.