SB 1.15.9
yat-tejasa nrpa-siro-’nghrim ahan makhartham
aryo ’nujas tava gajayuta-sattva-viryah
tenahrtah pramatha-natha-makhaya bhupa
yan-mocitas tad-anayan balim adhvare te
Translation by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada:
Your respectable younger brother, who possesses the strength of ten thousand elephants, killed, by His grace, Jarasandha, whose feet were worshiped by many kings. These kings had been brought for sacrifice in Jarasandha’s Mahabhairava-yajña, but they were thus released. Later they paid tribute to Your Majesty.
Purport by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada:
Jarasandha was a very powerful king of Magadha, and the history of his birth and activities is also very interesting. His father, King Brhadratha, was also a very prosperous and powerful king of Magadha, but he had no son, although he married two daughters of the King of Kasi. Being disappointed in not getting a son from either of the two queens, the King, along with his wives, left home to live in the forest for austerities, but in the forest he was benedicted by one great rsi to have a son, and he gave him one mango to be eaten by the queens. The queens did so and were very soon pregnant. The King was very happy to see the queens bearing children, but when the ripe time approached, the queens delivered one child in two parts, one from each of the queens’ wombs. The two parts were thrown in the forest, where a great she-demon used to live, and she was glad to have some delicate flesh and blood from the newly born child. Out of curiosity she joined the two parts, and the child became complete and regained life. The she-demon was known as Jara, and being compassionate on the childless King, she went to the King and presented him with the nice child. The King was very pleased with the she-demon and wanted to reward her according to her desire. The she-demon expressed her desire that the child be named after her, and thus the child was surnamed Jarasandha, or one who was joined by Jara, the she-demon. In fact, this Jarasandha was born as one of the parts and parcels of the demon Vipracitti. The saint by whose benedictions the queens bore the child was called Candra Kausika, who foretold of the child before his father Brhadratha.
Since Jarasandha possessed demoniac qualities from birth, naturally he became a great devotee of Lord Siva, the lord of all ghostly and demoniac men. Ravana was a great devotee of Siva, and so also Jarasandha. He used to sacrifice all arrested kings before Lord Mahabhairava (Siva), and by his military power he defeated many small kings and arrested them to butcher before Mahabhairava. There are many devotees of Lord Mahabhairava, or Kalabhairava, in the province of Bihar, formerly called Magadha. Jarasandha was a relative of Kamsa, the maternal uncle of Krsna, and therefore after Kamsa’s death King Jarasandha became a great enemy of Krsna, and there were many fights between Jarasandha and Krsna. Lord Krsna wanted to kill him, but He also wanted that those who served as military men for Jarasandha might not be killed. Therefore a plan was adopted to kill him. Krsna, Bhima and Arjuna together went to Jarasandha in the dress of poor brahmanas and begged charity from King Jarasandha. Jarasandha never refused charity to any brahmana, and he performed many sacrifices also, yet he was not on a par with devotional service. Lord Krsna, Bhima and Arjuna asked Jarasandha for the facility of fighting him, and it was settled that Jarasandha would fight with Bhima only. So all of them were both guests and combatants of Jarasandha, and Bhima and Jarasandha fought every day for several days. Bhima became disappointed, but Krsna gave him hints about Jarasandha’s being joined together as an infant, and thus Bhima dissected him again and so killed him. All the kings who were detained in the concentration camp to be killed before Mahabhairava were thus released by Bhima. Feeling thus obliged to the Pandavas, they paid tribute to King Yudhisthira.