Panchajanya: The Story of Krishna's Conch

Updated: 13 October 2026

Quick answer: Panchajanya is the conch of Vishnu, blown by Krishna before the great war at Kurukshetra (Bhagavad Gita 1.15). It is named after Panchajana, a sea demon who took the form of a conch. Krishna killed him while searching for his teacher's lost son, and took the conch. In Tamil, the poet-saint Andal wrote ten verses on it.

Contents

• Key facts

• What is Panchajanya?

• What does Panchajanya mean?

• How did Krishna get the Panchajanya conch?

• Where is Panchajanya named in the Bhagavad Gita?

• Which Tamil hymns speak of Panchajanya?

• What kind of shell is a shankha?

• Can you really hear the sea in a conch shell?

• What is the comic Paanjajanyam about?

• Common questions

• In the comic

• Sources

Key facts

What is Panchajanya?

Panchajanya is the conch of Vishnu, and the conch that Krishna blows. Krishna is an avatar, an earthly form, of Vishnu. A conch is called shankha in Sanskrit, often written shankh. Panchajanya is one of the four things Vishnu is shown holding, with the disc Sudarshana, the mace Kaumodaki and a lotus.

It is named in the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna sounds it on the battlefield of Kurukshetra before the war begins.

What does Panchajanya mean?

Panchajanya is named after Panchajana, a sea demon who took the form of a conch: the word means the conch of Panchajana. Sanskrit dictionaries record more than one sense. For the conch, Apte's dictionary quotes a line from a text called the Harivamsa: Janardana (a name of Krishna) slew Panchajana and won the conch. The Monier-Williams dictionary lists another sense first, "relating to the 5 races of men", and cites the Rig Veda, a collection of Vedic hymns, for it. In that sense the word is about five peoples, not about a conch.

Wikipedia's Panchajanya page adds that the conch stands for the five elements, and that its sound is held to be the first sound of creation. It names no old text for this.

Read free: Paanjajanyam. After rain, snails appear from nowhere, and a son who studied acoustics sets out to find the cause. Read Episode 1 free →

How did Krishna get the Panchajanya conch?

Krishna took the Panchajanya conch from the demon Panchajana while searching for his teacher's lost son. The story is in the Bhagavata Purana, an old Sanskrit text on Vishnu and Krishna, Book 10, chapter 45.

When Krishna and his brother Balarama finished their studies, their teacher Sandipani asked for one thing as his fee: the return of his young son, who had died in the sea at Prabhasa.

The two brothers went to the shore, and the Ocean told them that a demon named Panchajana, who moved through the water in the form of a conch, had taken the boy. Krishna went into the sea and killed the demon. The boy was not inside him. What Krishna brought back was the conch shell that had grown around the demon's body.

He and Balarama carried it to Samyamani, the city of Yama, god of death, and Krishna blew it loudly when they arrived. Yama came out and asked what he could do. Krishna told him to bring the teacher's son, and Yama brought the boy out. Krishna and Balarama returned him to Sandipani.

Other texts tell it differently, as summarised on Wikipedia's Panchajanya page. In the Mahabharata it is Vishnu who kills Panchajana and takes the shell he lived in. In the Skanda Purana, another old Sanskrit text, the demon has the form of a whale that swallowed the boy.

Where is Panchajanya named in the Bhagavad Gita?

Panchajanya is named in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 1, verse 15, the first conch the Gita gives a name. Krishna is on the side of the five Pandava brothers. Verses 15 and 16 name a conch for him and for each of them:

• Krishna: Panchajanya

• Arjuna: Devadatta

• Bhima: Paundra

• Yudhishthira: Anantavijaya

• Nakula: Sughosha

• Sahadeva: Manipushpaka

Krishna is in this war as Arjuna's charioteer and guide. Bhishma blows his conch earlier, in verse 12, and Krishna and Arjuna blow theirs in verse 14, but no conch is named until verse 15.

Which Tamil hymns speak of Panchajanya?

Andal, the only woman among the Alvars (Tamil poet-saints devoted to Vishnu), wrote ten verses on the Panchajanya conch in her Nachiyar Tirumoli. They form its seventh section and are known by their opening words, "Karuppuram narumo". Nine of the ten are spoken to the conch itself. She calls it the white conch, ven sangu; sangu is the Tamil word for a conch.

She opens by questioning the conch, not by praising it. Do the lips of Krishna smell of camphor, or of the lotus? Are they sweet? The conch touches his lips every time he blows it, so it is the one she can ask.

In the second verse she tells the conch its own history: born in the deep sea, in the body of the demon Panchajana, grown there, and now resting in Krishna's hand. It is the same origin the Bhagavata Purana gives the conch, in a single Tamil verse.

Andal names the conch again in the Tiruppavai, her other poem, verse 26, where she asks Krishna for conches like his milk-white Panchajanya, whose sound makes the whole world tremble. Scholars place Andal in the 8th century; tradition gives a much older date. She came from Srivilliputhur in Tamil Nadu.

What kind of shell is a shankha?

The sacred conch, or shankha, is the shell of a sea snail, Turbinella pyrum, which lives in the Indian Ocean. A hole is drilled near the tip so that it can be blown like a trumpet.

Most conch shells coil the same way. A shell that coils the other way is very rare. It is known as the Valampuri conch, and as Dakshinavarta in Sanskrit, and it is linked with Vishnu and Lakshmi. Andal uses the Tamil word too: in her fourth verse she calls the conch Valampuri, which the koyil.org translation gives as curled to the right. The conch was also the royal emblem of Travancore, and it remains in the state emblem of Kerala.

Can you really hear the sea in a conch shell?

No, you cannot hear the sea in a conch shell. You hear the noise already around you, and faint sounds of your own body, reshaped by the shell. A shell is a hollow that makes some sounds stronger and others weaker.

An empty cup does the same, and so does a hand cupped over the ear. It sounds like the sea partly because moving air sounds a little like moving water, and partly because we connect shells with the sea.

What is the comic Paanjajanyam about?

Paanjajanyam (பாஞ்சஜன்யம்) is an original Tamil comic from Siva Comics, created by B. Sivakumar, and its subject is sound. After the rains, snails appear in great numbers. A deaf father insists that their sound is the voice of his late wife. His son, who studied acoustics, sets out to find the cause.

The series description names Vaishnava hymns (hymns to Vishnu), the scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, plants and snails as its threads. Bose (1858 to 1937) was the Indian scientist who built instruments to record how plants respond to a stimulus.

A conch is the shell of a sea snail, and the comic that carries the conch's name is full of snails. Read Episode 1 of Paanjajanyam free.

Common questions

What is Panchajanya?

Panchajanya is the conch (shankh) of Vishnu. Krishna blows it before the Kurukshetra war in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 1, verse 15.

What does Panchajanya mean?

Panchajanya is named after Panchajana, the sea demon in the form of a conch whom Krishna killed. Dictionaries also list another sense, "relating to the 5 races of men", and Wikipedia's Panchajanya page says the conch stands for the five elements, without naming an old text for it.

How did Krishna get the Panchajanya conch?

In the Bhagavata Purana, Krishna kills the sea demon Panchajana while searching for the lost son of his teacher Sandipani, and takes the conch that had grown around the demon's body.

Who was Panchajana?

Panchajana was a demon who lived in the sea in the form of a conch. In the Bhagavata Purana, Krishna kills him in the sea off Prabhasa. In the Skanda Purana he has the form of a whale, and in the Mahabharata it is Vishnu who kills him.

What are the names of the Pandavas' conches?

The Pandavas' conches are: Yudhishthira, Anantavijaya; Bhima, Paundra; Arjuna, Devadatta; Nakula, Sughosha; Sahadeva, Manipushpaka. Krishna's conch is Panchajanya.

Which Tamil poet wrote about Panchajanya?

Andal wrote about Panchajanya. The seventh section of her Nachiyar Tirumoli is a set of ten verses on the conch, asking it what Krishna's lips smell and taste like.

What is a Valampuri conch?

A Valampuri conch is a right-turning conch, called Dakshinavarta in Sanskrit. Its spiral runs the opposite way to the common shell. It is very rare, and it is linked with Vishnu and Lakshmi.

Can you hear the ocean in a conch shell?

No. A conch shell is a hollow that strengthens some of the sounds already around you. An empty cup held to the ear does the same.

What is the Paanjajanyam comic?

Paanjajanyam is an original Tamil comic from Siva Comics about sound, snails and a deaf father who insists the snails' sound is the voice of his late wife. Episode 1 is free to read.

In the comic

Paanjajanyam shares its name with Krishna's conch, and its subject is sound. Read Paanjajanyam, Episode 1 →

Sources

1. Srimad Bhagavatam 10.45: Krishna Rescues His Teacher's Son, vedabase.io (Sanskrit text with English translation): Sandipani's request, the demon Panchajana, the conch, Yama and the return of the boy

2. Panchajanya, Wikipedia: the conch as Vishnu's attribute, the demon it is named after, the five elements, and the Mahabharata and Skanda Purana versions

3. Pancajanya: definitions, wisdomlib.org (entries from the Monier-Williams, Apte and Shabda-Sagara Sanskrit dictionaries): the meaning of the word and Apte's citation of the Harivamsa

4. Bhagavad Gita, chapter 1, verse 12, holy-bhagavad-gita.org: Bhishma blowing an unnamed conch first

5. Bhagavad Gita, chapter 1, verse 13, holy-bhagavad-gita.org: the Kaurava army sounding conches and drums, none named

6. Bhagavad Gita, chapter 1, verse 14, holy-bhagavad-gita.org: Krishna and Arjuna blowing conches that are not yet named

7. Bhagavad Gita, chapter 1, verse 15, holy-bhagavad-gita.org: Panchajanya, Devadatta and Paundra

8. Bhagavad Gita, chapter 1, verses 16 to 18, holy-bhagavad-gita.org: Anantavijaya, Sughosha and Manipushpaka, all named in verse 16

9. Bhagavad Gita, Wikipedia: Krishna as an avatar of Vishnu and as Arjuna's charioteer and guide

10. Nachiyar Tirumoli, seventh section: Karuppuram narumo, koyil.org, Divya Prabandham: Andal's ten verses on the conch, the white conch, the word Valampuri in verse 4, and its birth in the body of Panchajana

11. Tiruppavai, verses 21 to 30, koyil.org, Divya Prabandham: verse 26 and the milk-white Panchajanya

12. Andal, Wikipedia: Andal as the only woman among the Alvars, her two poems, her century (and the older traditional date) and birthplace

13. Shankha, Wikipedia: the species, the hole drilled near the tip, the rare Valampuri form and the Travancore emblem

14. Seashell resonance, Wikipedia: what causes the sound heard in a shell

15. Jagadish Chandra Bose, Wikipedia: his dates and his work on plant responses

16. Paanjajanyam, sivacomics.com: the comic's story, its threads and its creator, read 10 October 2026

Cite this page: Ramakrishnan S. "Panchajanya: The Story of Krishna's Conch." Siva Comics, 13 October 2026. https://www.sivacomics.com/insider/panchajanya

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