Verse Text
tatra iṣṭānāptyā, yathā śrī-daśame
kṛtvā mukhāny avaśucaḥ śvasanena śuṣyad
bimbādharāṇi caraṇena likhantyaḥ |
asrer upāttamasibhiḥ kucakuṅkumāni
tasthur mṛjantya uruduḥkha-bharāḥ sma tūṣṇīm ||137||
Translation
Pondering arising from not attaining the desired object of love, from the Tenth Canto: Their heads hanging down and their heavy, sorrowful breathing drying up their reddened lips, the gopīs scratched the ground with their toes. Tears flowed from their eyes, carrying their kajjala and washing away the vermilion smeared on their breasts. Thus they stood, silently bearing the burden of their unhappiness. SB 10.29.29
Purport (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
This verse shows the anubhāvas resulting from cintā. Lajjā is also implied. “By this invitation to love we gave up our natural shyness and now shyness has returned. Being well-bred young women we have heaps of shyness, but because of that love we have given up shyness. That type of love is praiseworthy in the opinion of those knowledgeable of rasa, and is never criticized. The characteristic of this love is that it brings the Supreme Lord under control. If the object of our love, Kṛṣṇa has not come under control, it must be that we do not really have love for Him. What was the use of our giving up our shyness? Such thoughts show remorse, shyness and cintā, pondering.”
Their faces show that remorse. Out of lamentation their lips, red like bimba fruits, became dried up by hot breathing. When the heat of the sun dries up ripe bimba fruits, they lose their fullness and become full of blemishes. The shyness and pondering are next described. They wrote on the earth with the big toes of their left feet. By this they indicated that they desired to enter the earth as it parted. Lamentation and pain are described next. The tears mixed with kajjala smeared the kuṁkuma on their breasts. It appeared that the black line created was dividing them in half with the saw of great remorse due to the increased period of separation. Tears in the plural indicate that great volumes of tears flowed. By not mentioning that the tears dampened their clothing, it is suggested that the two Yamunā rivers flowing from their eyes and the fire of pain arising in their hearts began a conflict, one desiring to moisten everything and one desiring to dry everything up, one being victorious and one being defeated. With the weight of extreme sorrow, they stood silently. Not tolerating the burden, they lost consciousness. Thus they simply stood there. They stood straight up, like statues without consciousness.
Purport (Nectar of Devotion)
In the Tenth Canto, Twenty-ninth Chapter, verse 29, of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, when Kṛṣṇa asked all the gopīs to go back to their homes, they did not like it. Because of their grief at this, they were sighing heavily, and their beautiful faces appeared to be drying up. In this condition they remained, without making a sound. They began to draw lines on the ground with their toes, and with their tears they washed the black ointment from their eyes onto their breasts, which were covered with red kuṅkuma powder. This is an instance of anxiety in ecstatic love.