This unexpected denouement enrages Kansa but instead of desisting from the attempt and bringing into force the second part of his plan, he decides to make one further effort to murder his hated foe.  He accordingly summons the wolf demon, Vyamasura, gives him detailed instructions and dispatches him to Brindaban.  The demon hies to the forest, arriving while Krishna and the children are still at blind man’s buff.  He has dressed himself as a beggar and going humbly up to Krishna asks if he may join in.  Krishna tells him to choose whatever game he likes and the demon says, ‘What about the game of wolf and rams?’ ‘Very well,’ Krishna answers, ’You be the wolf and the cowherd boys the rams.’  They start to play and the demon rounds up all the children and keeps them in a cave.  Then, assuming true wolf’s form he pounces on Krishna.  Krishna, however, is quite prepared and seizing the wolf by the throat, strangles it to death.

Akrura is now sent for and instructed to go to Brindaban and return with Krishna to Mathura.  He sets out and as he journeys allows his thoughts to dwell on the approaching meeting.  ‘Now,’ he muses ’has my life borne fruit; my night is followed by the dawn of day; since I shall see the countenance of Vishnu, whose eyes are like the expanded leaf of the lotus.  I shall behold that lotus-eyed aspect of Vishnu, which, when seen only in imagination, takes away the sins of men.  I shall today behold that glory of glories, the mouth of Vishnu, whence proceeded the Vedas, and all their dependent sciences.  I shall see the sovereign of the world, by whom the world is sustained; who is worshipped as the best of males, as the male sacrifice in sacrificial rites.  I shall see Vishnu, who is without beginning or end; by worshipping whom with a hundred sacrifices, Indra obtained the sovereignty over the gods.  The soul of all, the knower of all, he who is all and is present in all, he who is permanent, undecaying, all-pervading will converse with me.  He, the unborn, who has preserved the world in the various forms of a fish, tortoise, a boar, a horse, a lion will this day speak to me.  Now the lord of the earth, who assumes shapes at will, has taken upon him the condition of humanity, to accomplish some object cherished in his heart.  Glory to that being whose deceptive adoption of father, son, brother, friend, mother, and relative, the world is unable to penetrate.  May he in whom cause and effect, and the world itself, is comprehended, be propitious to me, through his truth; for always do I put my trust in that unborn, eternal Vishnu; by meditation on whom man becomes the repository of all good things.’[31]