Bhagavatham Stories

Prosperity is a delicate servant; mishandled, it becomes master. In Dvaraka, Satrajit, a Yadava of influence, received from the sun-god the Syamantaka jewel—a radiant gem said to increase grain and gold wherever it dwelt. Krishna counseled that such a power should serve the common store, not a private vault. Satrajit refused, invoking rights and lineage. The jewel stayed in his house; prosperity followed, and so did whispers—the kind that stick to wealth like dust to oil.

When Satrajit’s brother, Prasena, wore the jewel on a hunt and did not return, rumor sharpened into accusation: Krishna had taken the gem. Dvaraka murmurings grew bold in corners and careful in courts. Krishna answered not with indignation but with inquiry. He traced Prasena’s path through forest and gorge until the trail led to a lion’s den. The earth told its story in marks and bones: Prasena had fallen to the lion. Yet the jewel was gone again—taken by Jambavan, the ancient bear-king, who carried it to his cavern home for his child to play with.

Krishna entered the cavern and wrestled Jambavan through days that felt like seasons—force matched with respect, strength welded to patience. At last, Jambavan recognized in Krishna the axis he had served in older wars—the same presence by another name. He offered the jewel and his daughter, Jambavati, in alliance and love. Krishna accepted both, and with them, the understanding that truth sometimes needs distance before it becomes visible.

Returning to Dvaraka, Krishna placed the Syamantaka in Satrajit’s hands, not to shame but to educate. Satrajit felt the weight of a cleared rumor—the heaviness that accompanies the realization that one’s speech has endangered proportion. Seeking atonement, he offered the jewel to Krishna. Krishna declined. Prosperity must be stewarded by those who learned its danger. Satrajit then placed the jewel where it could serve the many and offered his daughter, Satyabhama, in marriage to Krishna, sealing reconciliation with relationship rather than mere apology.

The city drew from the episode a pedagogy: that rumor, left unchallenged, becomes architecture; that correction, done calmly and completely, restores not only facts but trust; that wealth is safe only when named correctly—grain is food, gold is tool, jewels are responsibility. Children learned to ask a new question when encountering fortune: whom does this benefit, and how?

In council, Krishna quoted the forest, not the ledger: “Tracks reveal truth when tongues will not.” The Syamantaka sat in the public treasury under law, and stories of its temptations continued to circulate, not as fear, but as caution—warnings that prosperity’s glow can blind the careless. Dvaraka matured a little, understanding that the fastest way to destroy a city is to confuse rumor for knowledge and wealth for worth.