SB 3.13.35 · Srimad-Bhagavatam

Devanagari

रूपं तवैतन्ननु दुष्कृतात्मनां दुर्दर्शनं देव यदध्वरात्मकम् । छन्दांसि यस्य त्वचि बर्हिरोम- स्वाज्यं द‍ृशि त्वङ्‌घ्रि षु चातुर्होत्रम् ॥ ३५ ॥

Verse text

rūpaṁ tavaitan nanu duṣkṛtātmanāṁ durdarśanaṁ deva yad adhvarātmakam chandāṁsi yasya tvaci barhi-romasv ājyaṁ dṛśi tv aṅghriṣu cātur-hotram

Synonyms

rūpam — form ; tava — Your ; etat — this ; nanu — but ; duṣkṛta — ātmanām — of souls who are simply miscreants ; durdarśanam — very difficult to see ; deva — O Lord ; yat — that ; adhvara — ātmakam — worshipable by performances of sacrifice ; chandāṁsi — the Gāyatrī mantra and others ; yasya — whose ; tvaci — touch of the skin ; barhiḥ — sacred grass called kuśa ; romasu — hairs on the body ; ājyam — clarified butter ; dṛśi — in the eyes ; tu — also ; aṅghriṣu — on the four legs ; cātuḥ — hotram — four kinds of fruitive activities .

Translation

O Lord, Your form is worshipable by performances of sacrifice, but souls who are simply miscreants are unable to see it. All the Vedic hymns, Gāyatrī and others, are in the touch of Your skin. In Your bodily hairs is the kuśa grass, in Your eyes is the clarified butter, and in Your four legs are the four kinds of fruitive activities.

Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)

O Lord! The sinful cannot see your form as sacrifice, from whose skin arose the verses, from whose hair holes arose kuśa grass, from whose eyes arose ghee, and from whose feet arose the four hotras. They praise Varāha as the form of sacrifice in four verses. Saying that the verses of the Vedas are in his skin means that his skin is the cause of the verses. Absence of long vowel in barhi is poetic license. Cāturhotram refers to the four actions of the hotra, adhvaryu, udgātā and brahma.

Purport

There is a class of miscreants who are known in the words of Bhagavad-gītā as veda-vādī, or so-called strict followers of the Vedas. They do not believe in the incarnation of the Lord, what to speak of the Lord’s incarnation as the worshipable hog. They describe worship of the different forms or incarnations of the Lord as anthropomorphism. In the estimation of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam these men are miscreants, and in Bhagavad-gītā (7.15) they are called not only miscreants but also fools and the lowest of mankind, and it is said that their knowledge has been plundered by illusion due to their atheistic temperament. For such condemned persons, the Lord’s incarnation as the gigantic hog is invisible. These strict followers of the Vedas who despise the eternal forms of the Lord may know from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam that such incarnations are personified forms of the Vedas. Lord Boar’s skin, His eyes and His bodily hair holes are all described here as different parts of the Vedas. He is therefore the personified form of the Vedic hymns, and specifically the Gāyatrī mantra.