The kings and the princes released by Lord Kåñëa after the death of Jaräsandha were rulers of different parts of the world. Jaräsandha was so powerful in military strength that he had conquered all these princes and kings, numbering 20,800. They were all incarcerated within a mountain cave especially constructed as a fort, and for a long time they were kept in that situation. When they were released by the grace of Lord Kåñëa, they all looked very unhappy, their garments were niggardly, and their faces were almost dried up for want of proper bodily care. They were very weak due to hunger, and their faces had lost all beauty and luster. Because of the kings' long imprisonment, every part of their bodies had become slackened and invalid. But although suffering in that miserable condition of life, they had the opportunity to think about the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Viñëu.

Now before them they saw the color of the transcendental body of Lord Kåñëa, exactly like the hue of a newly arrived cloud in the sky. He appeared before them nicely covered by yellow colored silken garments, with four hands like Viñëu, and carrying the different symbols of the club, the conchshell, the disc and the lotus flower. There were marks of golden lines on His chest, and the nipples of His breast appeared to be like the whorl of a lotus flower. His eyes appeared to be spread like the petals of a lotus flower, and His smiling face exhibited the symbol of eternal peace and prosperity. His glittering earrings were set beautifully, and His helmet was bedecked with valuable jewels. The Lord's necklace of pearls and the bangles and bracelets nicely situated on His body all shone with a transcendental beauty. The Kaustubha jewel hanging on His chest glittered with great luster, and the Lord wore a beautiful flower garland. After so much distress, when the kings and princes saw Lord Kåñëa, with His beautiful transcendental features, they looked upon Him to their hearts' content, as if they were drinking nectar through their eyes, licking His body with their tongues, smelling the aroma of His body with their noses, and embracing Him with their arms. Just by dint of their being in front of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, all reactions to their sinful activities were washed away. Therefore, without reservation, they surrendered themselves at the lotus feet of the Lord. It is stated in the Bhagavad-gétä that unless one is freed from all kinds of sinful reactions, one cannot fully surrender unto the lotus feet of the Lord. All the princes who saw Lord Kåñëa forgot all their past tribulations. With folded hands and with great devotion, they began to offer prayers to Lord Kåñëa, as follows.

"Dear Lord, O Supreme Personality of Godhead, master of all demigods, You can immediately remove all Your devotees' pangs because Your devotees are fully surrendered unto You. O dear Lord Kåñëa, O eternal Deity of transcendental bliss and knowledge, You are imperishable, and we offer our respectful obeisances unto Your lotus feet. It is by Your causeless mercy that we have been released from the imprisonment of Jaräsandha, but now we pray unto You to release us from the imprisonment with the illusory energy of this material existence. Please, therefore, stop our continuous cycle of birth and death. We now have sufficient experience of the miserable material condition of life in which we are fully absorbed, and having tasted its bitterness, we have come to take shelter under Your lotus feet. Dear Lord, O killer of the demon Madhu, we can now clearly see that Jaräsandha was not at fault in the least; it is actually by Your causeless mercy that we were bereft of our kingdoms because we were very proud of calling ourselves rulers and kings. Any ruler or king who becomes too puffed up with false prestige and power does not get the opportunity to understand his real constitutional position and eternal life. Such foolish so-called rulers and kings become falsely proud of there position under the influence of Your illusory energy; they are just like a foolish person who considers a mirage in the desert to be a reservoir of water. Foolish persons think that their material possessions will give them protection, and those who are engaged in sense gratification falsely accept this material world as a place of eternal enjoyment. O Lord, O Supreme Personality of Godhead, we must admit that, before this, we were puffed up with our material opulences. Because we were all envious of each other and wanted to conquer one another, we all engaged in fighting for supremacy, even at the cost of sacrificing the lives of many citizens."

This is the disease of political power. As soon as a king or a nation becomes rich in material opulences, he wants to dominate other nations by military aggression. Similarly, mercantile men want to monopolize a certain type of business and control other mercantile groups. Degraded by false prestige and infatuated by material opulences, human society, instead of striving for Kåñëa consciousness, creates havoc and disrupts peaceful living. Thus men naturally forget the real purpose of life: to attain the favor of Lord Viñëu, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

The kings continued: "O Lord, we were simply engaged in the abominable task of killing citizens and alluring them to be unnecessarily killed, just to satisfy our political whims. We did not consider that Your Lordship is always present before us in the form of cruel death. We were so fooled that we became the cause of death for others, forgetting our own impending death. But, dear Lord, the retaliation of the time element, which is Your representative, is certainly insurmountable. The time element is so strong that no one can escape its influence; therefore we have received the reactions of our atrocious activities, and we are now bereft of all opulences and stand before You like street beggars. We consider our position to be Your causeless, unalloyed mercy upon us because now we can understand that we were falsely proud and that our material opulences could be withdrawn from us within a second by Your will. By Your causeless mercy only, we are now able to think of Your lotus feet. This is our greatest gain. Dear Lord, it is known to everyone that the body is a breeding ground of diseases. Now we are sufficiently aged, and instead of being proud of our bodily strength, we are getting weaker day by day. We are no longer interested in sense gratification or the false happiness derived through the material body. By Your grace, we have now come to the conclusion that hankering after such material happiness is just like searching for water in a desert mirage. We are no longer interested in the results of our pious activities, such as performing great sacrifices in order to be elevated to the heavenly planets. We now understand that such elevation to a higher material standard of life in the heavenly planets may sound very relishable, but actually there cannot be any happiness within this material world. We pray for Your Lordship to favor us by instructing us how to engage in the transcendental loving service of Your lotus feet so that we may never forget our eternal relationship with Your Lordship. We do not want liberation from the entanglement of material existence. By Your will we may take birth in any species of life; it does not matter. We simply pray that we may never forget Your lotus feet under any circumstances. Dear Lord, we now surrender unto Your lotus feet by offering our respectful obeisances unto You because You are the Supreme Lord, the Personality of Godhead, Kåñëa, the son of Vasudeva. You are the Supersoul in everyone's heart, and You are Lord Hari, who can take away all miserable conditions of material existence. Dear Lord, Your name is Govinda, the reservoir of all pleasure. One who is engaged in satisfying Your senses automatically satisfies his own senses also, and therefore You are known as Govinda. Dear Lord, You are ever famous, for You can put an end to all the miseries of Your devotees. Please, therefore, accept us as Your surrendered servants."

After hearing the prayers of the kings released from the prison of Jaräsandha, Lord Kåñëa, who is always the protector of surrendered souls and the ocean of mercy for the devotees, replied to them as follows in His sweetly transcendental voice, which was grave and full of meaning. "My dear kings," He said, "I bestow upon you My blessings. From this day forth you will be attached to My devotional service without fail. I give you this benediction, as you have desired. You may know from Me that I am always sitting within your hearts as Supersoul, and because you have now turned your faces towards Me, I, as master of everyone, shall always give you good counsel so that you may never forget Me and so that gradually you will come back home, back to Godhead. My dear kings, your decision to give up all conceptions of material enjoyment and turn instead toward My devotional service is factually the symptom of your good fortune. Henceforward you will always be blessed with blissful life. I confirm that all you have spoken about Me in your prayers is factual. It is a fact that the materially opulent position of one who is not fully Kåñëa conscious is the cause of his downfall and of his becoming a victim of the illusory energy. In the past, there were many rebellious kings, such as Haihaya, Nahuña, Vena, Rävaëa and Narakäsura. Some of them were demigods, and some of them were demons, but because of their false perception of their positions, they fell from their exalted posts, and thus they no longer remained the kings of their respective kingdoms.

"While lost in the violence of conditional life, every one of you must understand that anything material has its starting point, growth, expansion, deterioration, and, finally, disappearance. All material bodies are subjected to these six conditions, and any relative acquisitions which are accumulated by this body are definitely subject to final destruction. Therefore, no one should be attached to perishable things. As long as one is within this material body, he should be very cautious in worldly dealings. The most perfect way of life in this material world is simply to be devoted to My transcendental loving service and to honestly execute the prescribed duties of one's particular position of life. As far as you are concerned, you all belong to kñatriya families. Therefore, you should live honestly, according to the prescribed duties befitting the royal order, and you should make your citizens happy in all respects. Keep to the standard of kñatriya life. Do not beget children out of sense gratification, but simply take charge of the welfare of the people in general. Everyone takes birth in this material world because of the contaminated desires of his previous life, and thus he is subjected to the stringent laws of nature, such as birth and death, distress and happiness, profit and loss. One should not be disturbed by duality, but should always be fixed in My service and thus remain balanced in mind and satisfied in all circumstances, considering all things to be given by Me, and one should remain undeviated from engagement in devotional service. Thus one can live a very happy and peaceful life, even within this material condition. In other words, one should actually be callous to this material body and its by-products and should remain unaffected by them. He should remain fully satisfied in the interests of the spirit soul and be engaged in the service of the Supersoul. One should engage his mind only on Me, one should simply become My devotee, one should simply Worship Me, and one should offer his respectful obeisances unto Me alone. In this way, one can cross over this ocean of nescience very easily and at the end come back to Me. In conclusion, your lives should constantly be engaged in My service."

After delivering His instructions to the kings and princes, Lord Kåñëa immediately arranged for their comfort and asked many servants and maidservants to take care of them. Lord Kåñëa requested Sahadeva, the son of King Jaräsandha, to supply all necessities to the kings and also asked him to show them all respect and honor. In pursuance of the order of Lord Kåñëa, Sahadeva offered them all honor, and presented them with ornaments, garments, garlands, and other paraphernalia. After taking their baths and dressing very nicely, the kings appeared happy and gentle. Then they were supplied nice foodstuffs. Lord Kåñëa supplied everything for their comfort, as was befitting their royal positions. Since the kings were so mercifully treated by Lord Kåñëa, they felt great happiness, and all their bright faces appeared just like the stars in the sky after the end of the rainy season. They were all nicely dressed and ornamented, and their earrings glittered. Each one was then seated on a chariot bedecked with gold and jewels and drawn by decorated horses. After seeing that each was taken care of, Lord Kåñëa, in a sweet voice, asked them to return to their respective kingdoms. By His very liberal behavior, unparalleled in the history of the world, Lord Kåñëa released all the kings who had been in the clutches of Jaräsandha, and being fully satisfied, the kings began to engage in chanting His holy name, thinking of His holy form, and glorifying His transcendental pastimes as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So engaged, they returned to their respective kingdoms. The citizens of their kingdoms were very greatly pleased to see them return, and when they heard of the kind dealings of Lord Kåñëa, they all became very happy. The kings began to manage the affairs of their kingdoms in accordance with the instructions of Lord Kåñëa, and all those kings and their subjects passed their days very happily. This is the vivid example of the Kåñëa conscious society. If the people of the world divide the whole society, in terms of their respective material qualities, into four orders for material and spiritual progress, centering around Kåñëa and following the instructions of Kåñëa as stated in Bhagavad-gétä, the entire human society will undoubtedly be happy. This is the lesson that we have to take from this incident.

After thus causing the annihilation of Jaräsandha by Bhémasena and after being properly honored by Sahadeva, the son of Jaräsandha, Lord Kåñëa, accompanied by Bhémasena and Arjuna, returned to the city of Hastinäpura. When they reached the precincts of Hastinäpura, they blew their respective conchshells, and by hearing the sound vibrations and understanding who was arriving, everyone immediately became cheerful. But upon hearing the conchshells, the enemies of Kåñëa became very sorry. The citizens of Indraprastha felt their hearts become joyful simply by hearing the vibration of Kåñëa's conchshell because they could understand that Jaräsandha had been killed. Now the performance of the Räjasüya sacrifice by King Yudhiñöhira was almost certain. Bhémasena, Arjuna, and Kåñëa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, arrived before King Yudhiñöhira and offered their respects to the King. King Yudhiñöhira attentively heard the narration of the killing of Jaräsandha and the setting free of the kings. He also heard of the tactics which were adopted by Kåñëa to kill Jaräsandha. The King was naturally affectionate toward Kåñëa, but after hearing the story, he became even more bound in love for Kåñëa; tears of ecstasy glided from his eyes, and he became so stunned that he was almost unable to speak.

Thus ends the Bhaktivedanta purport of the Second Volume, Eighteenth Chapter, of Kåñëa, "Lord Kåñëa Returns to the City of Hastinäpura."