Meditations on Transcendence

 In Krishna’s itihāsa arc, the slaying of demons unfolds not as random heroics but as a carefully ordered dharmic progression. Narakasura falls first, during Krishna’s Dvārakā phase, in a direct battlefield act that frees the imprisoned princesses and restores violated order. Next comes Jarasandha , whose power is more political than feral; Krishna does not strike him down personally but orchestrates his end through Bhīma , dissolving a systemic obstruction and clearing the path for Yudhiṣṭhira’s Rājasūya yajña. Finally, Shishupala is slain at the very altar of kingship itself, after exhausting his measure of offenses, when Krishna’s Sudarśana responds not to arms but to accumulated adharma. Read together, the sequence reveals a deep logic: Naraka represents gross tyranny cut down by force, Jarāsandha embodies entrenched oppression undone by strategy, and Śiśupāla signifies verbal and moral transgression resolved by cosmic sanction. The order is not merely chronological; it is pe...