4.8 — The Statesman: Jarasandha, and the Founding of Dwarka

Kamsa is dead and Ugrasena is back on the throne of Mathura (4.2). And the bill arrives immediately.

Jarasandha, king of Magadha, is the most powerful ruler in India. Kamsa was married to two of his daughters. Krishna has killed his son-in-law, and Jarasandha's response is total: he attacks Mathura.

Seventeen attacks

The tradition says he came seventeen times.

Krishna and Balarama beat him back every time, and each time he goes home, raises another army from a larger resource base, and returns.

And Krishna does the arithmetic that nobody else in either epic does.

Winning every battle is not winning. Magadha is larger, richer and further away. Jarasandha can lose seventeen armies and raise an eighteenth. Mathura cannot lose one. The Yadavas are a clan, not an empire; every man killed defending the city is not replaceable. The exchange rate is fatal and the fact that they keep winning is disguising it.

And then Jarasandha allies with another king, Kalayavana, who comes from the west with a large force, and Mathura will be attacked from two directions at once.

The retreat

Krishna abandons the city.

He evacuates the entire population — the whole clan, with their households, their cattle and their goods — and moves them roughly a thousand kilometres west, to the coast of what is now Gujarat, onto a defensible site by the sea.

There he builds Dwarka, described as a fortified island or peninsula city, surrounded by water, with limited approaches.

Jarasandha arrives at Mathura and finds nothing.

Ranchhod

And for this, Krishna is given a name.

Ranchhod — "the one who fled the battlefield," "the deserter." It is a straightforward insult and it was meant as one. Shishupala uses it against him in open court at the Rajasuya (3.7), in the list of charges. It follows him for the rest of his life.

And it became a name of worship. There is a major temple at Dakor in Gujarat dedicated to Ranchhodrai, and hundreds of thousands of people use the word as a name of God.

An insult meaning "coward" became a form of worship, and that is one of the most interesting facts in Indian religion.

Why the retreat is the most impressive thing he does

Because everything in his world said not to.

A Kshatriya does not retreat. The entire warrior code is built on the opposite. Yudhishthira went to the dice game rather than look like a man who refuses a challenge (3.8). Karna spent his life unable to escape one insult (3.5). Duryodhana refused a settlement that gave him everything, rather than concede (3.11). Ravana lost a civilisation rather than return a woman (2.14).

Every disaster in this entire volume so far has been caused by somebody who could not accept looking bad.

And Krishna abandons his city, takes a name that means coward, and saves his entire people.

That is the single most transferable act in Part 4, and it is worth being explicit about the components.

He counted correctly. Not battles won — losses he could afford against losses the enemy could afford. Seventeen victories were hiding a losing position.

He separated the goal from the position. The goal was the survival of the Yadavas. Mathura was a location. Everyone else in the story had fused the two, which is why they could not leave.

He absorbed the reputational cost personally and immediately, and did not spend a single recorded moment arguing about it. Shishupala calls him a deserter in front of every king in India and he does not respond.

And he did not retreat into nothing. He built Dwarka. A retreat with a destination is a relocation; a retreat without one is a rout, and the difference is entirely in the preparation.

Jarasandha's death

Years later, at the Rajasuya (3.7), Jarasandha is still the obstacle. He also holds a large number of captured kings in prison, intending a mass sacrifice.

Krishna's solution: he, Bhima and Arjuna go to Magadha disguised as Brahmins, gain entry to the court, reveal themselves, and challenge Jarasandha to single combat. He chooses Bhima.

They wrestle for many days. Bhima cannot kill him — the tradition says Jarasandha was born in two halves, joined by a demoness, and can be rejoined however he is broken.

Krishna signals the answer: he tears a leaf in two and throws the halves in opposite directions. Bhima tears Jarasandha apart and throws the halves apart. He dies.

Two things about this.

It is not a clean act. Entry under false pretences, a challenge to a duel by three men who came in disguise, and a killing method conveyed by signal from the sidelines. It is the first appearance of the pattern that will define Kurukshetra (4.11): Krishna solves an unsolvable problem by a method that does not survive examination.

And the prisoners are released. Around twenty thousand captured kings, by the text's count, freed and restored. The act has a genuine and large benefit, which is exactly what makes the question hard, and 4.11 is where it gets answered.

Dwarka, and what he built

The city is described as extraordinary: fortified, planned, wealthy, surrounded by sea.

And its government is the thing worth noticing. Krishna does not rule it. Ugrasena is the nominal head, and the clan is governed by an assembly — the Yadavas are described as a confederation of families rather than a monarchy, with a council that debates and decides.

Krishna built a republic and stayed out of the top of it, which is entirely consistent with 4.2.

And it is what kills them. In 3.19, when the clan destroys itself at a drunken festival, there is nobody with the authority to stop it. The structure he built as a protection against tyranny had no mechanism for a crisis.

The epic does not comment. This book will: every governance design trades one failure mode for another. A system that cannot produce a tyrant also cannot produce a person who can stop a riot, and the Yadavas found out which failure they had bought after thirty-six years of not needing to know.

The submerged city

From 4.1: marine archaeology off the Gujarat coast at Dwarka has found submerged structures, stone blocks and anchors. The dating is contested and the more spectacular claims have not held up. What is uncontested: the coastline there has changed, and submerged material exists.

And the tradition itself says the sea took the city after Krishna's death (3.19). A tradition that records its own city being drowned, at a place where submerged structures are found, is at minimum an interesting coincidence, and it is as far as the evidence goes.

What to carry from this page

Count what you can afford to lose against what they can afford to lose. Winning every engagement while losing the exchange rate is the most common way capable people lose slowly.

Separate the goal from the position you are currently defending. Mathura was a location. Almost everything you are defending is a location.

Take the insult and leave. Ranchhod. Every catastrophe in this volume was caused by somebody who could not, and the one person who could saved a nation with it.

And retreat to somewhere. Build the destination before you go, or it is not a retreat.

Next: 4.9 — the sixteen thousand queens, the abduction of Rukmini, and every controversy about Krishna's household, answered.