The Brother Who Was Also a Serpent
Balarama is understood in most Vaishnava tradition not as an ordinary human incarnation but as a manifestation of Shesha, sometimes called Ananta, the great cosmic serpent on whose coils Vishnu reclines in Kshira Sagara, the ocean of milk. Where Krishna descends as Vishnu's own avatar, Balarama's presence alongside him is read as Shesha, Vishnu's eternal companion and support, taking birth in the same lifetime to remain close to him.
This identity is treated as mostly latent through Balarama's life, visible mainly in his exceptional strength, his mace and plough as weapons, and occasional glimpses, such as certain accounts describing serpent-like features appearing in dreams or visions around him. It becomes fully explicit only at the very end, at Prabhasa, in the aftermath of the Mausala Parva's catastrophe.
What the Text Describes at Prabhasa
After the Yadava clan destroys itself in the drunken brawl on the seashore, an episode covered in detail elsewhere in this series, Balarama is described withdrawing alone to a quiet spot near the coast, away from the carnage, and sitting down in deep meditation, in the posture of a yogi rather than a warrior surveying a battlefield.
The Mahabharata's Mausala Parva describes what happens next with restrained, almost documentary plainness: a great white serpent is seen emerging from Balarama's mouth as he sits, enormous and radiant, moving toward the ocean. The text identifies this serpent explicitly as Shesha, or Ananta, returning to his true form and his true home in the cosmic waters now that his purpose on earth, remaining close to Krishna through his avatara, was complete.
Unlike Krishna's own death shortly after, struck by a hunter's arrow in an episode of ordinary, almost accidental violence, Balarama's departure is presented as entirely voluntary and undramatic: no wound, no enemy, no final battle, simply a release, timed to the moment his brother's own presence on earth was also ending.
Two Brothers, Two Kinds of Ending
Commentators have long noted the deliberate contrast the text builds between the two departures. Krishna's death, by an ordinary hunter's arrow striking the one vulnerable point on his foot, mistaken for a deer, is written to look almost mundane, closing the avatar's life with the same kind of accident that ends an ordinary mortal's, a choice generally read as underscoring that even the divine, having taken a human body, accepted a human-style exit.
Balarama's departure, by contrast, is written as unmistakably non-human: no violence touches him, no accident befalls him, and the text does not pretend his body simply dies the way a person's does. It dissolves back into what it always secretly was. Together, the two deaths bracket the entire avatara with a reminder of what the text has been claiming from the very start of the Bhagavata and Mahabharata traditions, that Krishna and Balarama were never simply two remarkable men, however completely they lived as one.
What People Ask Most
Why is Balarama considered an avatar of Shesha rather than Vishnu directly?+
Different traditions vary on this; some Vaishnava schools identify Balarama as Shesha, Vishnu's serpent companion, taking birth alongside Krishna, while others count him among the primary avatars in his own right as an expansion of Vishnu.
Where is Prabhasa located today?+
Prabhasa is traditionally identified with the coastal area near Somnath in Gujarat, close to where the Mausala Parva places both Balarama's departure and, shortly after, Krishna's death.
Did Balarama know his death was coming?+
The text presents his withdrawal into meditation as a deliberate, composed choice rather than a reaction to surprise, consistent with the tradition's reading of it as a conscious return rather than a death in the ordinary sense.
About the author
Anjali Mehta · Editor, M.A. Religious Studies
Anjali is the managing editor for Vandnaa and oversees the festival and vrat coverage. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies and reviews every published article for accuracy, accessibility, and tradition-fidelity.
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