Nārada

Nārada is the divine sage who goes everywhere, his vīṇā in his hand, singing the deeds of Hari. Hari is Viṣṇu, the Lord; Nārāyaṇa and Vāsudeva are his names too, and Kṛṣṇa is the Lord himself, born on earth. In a former life he was the five-year-old son of a serving woman who heard the sages sing of Kṛṣṇa; he saw the Lord once in a forest and spent the rest of that life longing to see him again. Born again from Brahmā, the creator, he came to Sanatkumāra admitting that all his learning had not freed him from sorrow. He set the sage Vālmīki on the path to the Rāmāyaṇa, the poem of Rāma, and the sage Vyāsa on the path to the Bhāgavata, the book of the Lord's deeds, taught the boy Dhruva and the unborn Prahlāda, and took a curse never to rest in one place.

Contents

  1. The Serving Woman's Son
  2. The Form He Saw Once
  3. Born Again from Brahmā
  4. Learning That Was Only Words
  5. The Question at Vālmīki's Hermitage
  6. The Boy Who Went to Madhuvana
  7. The Queen in His Hermitage
  8. The Curse of Dakṣa
  9. The Two Trees
  10. The Sage Who Was Not Content

Beside them