Study a Verse

• Mārkaṇḍeya’s being drawn into the Lord’s body by His inhalation and expelled again by His exhalation should not be considered a symbolic description of the perennial cycles of material creation and annihilation.
• This portion of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes a real, historical event experienced by a great devotee of the Lord, and those trying to relegate this story to mere symbolic allegory are here declared to be unintelligent fools.

The purport's own sentences, chosen from the purport as its central points. Read the full purport on Vedabase to see them in place.

Terror and bewilderment → Wonder and surrender. Annihilation gives way to a tender divine vision.

Chapters 9–10 of Canto 12: Mārkaṇḍeya witnesses the deluge and divine child. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 10: Lord Śiva and Umā Glorify Mārkaṇḍeya Ṛṣi

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

Satisfied with Mārkaṇḍeya’s devotion, Lord Śiva awarded him the boons of renown, freedom from old age and death until the time of universal dissolution, knowledge of all three phases of time, renunciation, realized knowledge and the position of a teacher of the Purāṇas. Those who chant and hear the story of Mārkaṇḍeya Ṛṣi will attain liberation from material life, which is based on the accumulated desires generated from fruitive work.