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The Divine name

CHENNAI : The potency of the Divine name has been highlighted in the scriptural texts through the lives of many devotees who were liberated from bondage by chanting it and saved during critical junctures in their lives. Three such exemplary devotees whose faith in His bounteous grace elicited His response were the elephant-king, Gajendra and Prahlada, and Draupadi.

While in the case of the first two the Lord rushed in person and incarnated respectively to save them, in Draupadi's case it was the Divine name that saved her modesty when she surrendered to Him in distress calling out His names: "Krishna, Vasudeva, they say You are the last refuge of the helpless. You are everything to me. They say You are everywhere, that You are present where Your devotee sings Your praises. You must be here. I surrender myself to You. It is up to You to save me." Lord Krishna was in Dwaraka then and hence it was His name that was responsible for the endless supply of cloth when Dussasana disrobed her and stopped exhausted by his efforts.

To all those who witnessed what seemed a miracle, was indeed a demonstration of the efficacy of the Divine name. But Krishna felt indebted to her for the trust she had reposed in Him and regretted that He had not graced her adequately even after the success in the Mahabharata war, which had avenged the wrongs done to Draupadi to some extent. So when Uttara (widow of Abhimanyu, Arjuna's deceased son) rushed to Him in distress seeking protection for the growing child in her womb (Pareekshit) the Lord was glad that an opportunity had presented itself to repay Draupadi's faith in Him, said Kalyanapuram Sri R.Aravamudachariar in his Harikatha.

Pareekshit was the only progeny who remained to succeed Yudhishthira as Aswatthama had killed all the sons of the Pandavas in a midnight massacre when they were sleeping mistaking them for the Pandavas. Aswatthama had wanted to wipe out the lineage of the Pandavas to show his gratitude to Duryodana. When an angry Arjuna seeing Draupadi grief-stricken by the tragedy confronted him, he discharged the missile of Brahma (Brahmastra), which entered Uttara's womb. The Lord intervened and Pareekshit thus received Krishna's singular grace even before he was born.

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