Devanagari
श्री शुक उवाच
ब्रह्मशापापदेशेन कालेनामोघवाञ्छित: ।
संहृत्य स्वकुलं स्फीतं त्यक्ष्यन्देहमचिन्तयत् ॥ २९ ॥
Verse text
śrī-śuka uvāca
brahma-śāpāpadeśena
kālenāmogha-vāṣchitaḥ
saṁhṛtya sva-kulaṁ sphītaṁ
tyakṣyan deham acintayat
Synonyms
śrī
—
śukaḥ uvāca — Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī said
;
brahma
—
śāpa — cursing by the brāhmaṇas
;
apadeśena
—
on the plea, by such a show
;
kālena
—
by the eternal time
;
amogha
—
unfailing
;
vāṣchitaḥ
—
one who so desires
;
saṁhṛtya
—
closing
;
sva
—
kulam — own family
;
sphītam
—
excessively numerous
;
tyakṣyan
—
after giving up
;
deham
—
the universal form
;
acintayat
—
thought to Himself .
Translation
Śukadeva Gosvāmī replied: My dear King, the cursing of the brāhmaṇas was only a plea, but the actual fact was the supreme desire of the Lord. He wanted to disappear from the face of the earth after dispatching His excessively numerous family members. He thought to Himself as follows.
Translation (Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura)
Śukadeva said: Using the excuse of the brāhmaṇa’s curse, the Lord, whose desire cannot be thwarted by time, thought of withdrawing his flourishing dynasty and separating himself from his Nārāyaṇa’s form, which had merged into him when he appeared on earth.
Here is the answer. The contrivance of the brāhmaṇa’s curse was only a pretext for causing the disappearance of the Yadus from the material world. The Lord, whose desire cannot be made useless (amogha) by time, thought of withdrawing his clan by that means. He thought of giving up a body which was spread beyond its limits (sphītam). Though his eternity, knowledge and bliss is confined to his svarūpa, it was now overextended in the sense of being visible to the eyes of the people in the material world.
There is the following rule. sa-viśeṣaṇe vidhi-niṣedhau viśesaṇam upasaṁkrāmataḥ sati viśeṣye bādhe: statements of affirmation and denial change the meaning of their particular descriptive elements if there is a contradiction to the principal subject. [Note: This rule is found in Nyāya-vartika-tātparya by Vacaspati Miśra.] The word tyaksan should follow this rule, acting as a descriptive, not as the main subject. [Note: If the meaning of tyakṣyan deham contradicts the main subject Kṛṣṇa who has an eternal body, the statement must have another meaning.] For example one can say, “Caitra was the king. Giving up the body, he burned it.” The body refers to that of his wife who has died, since it is impossible that he die and burn his own body. In the present verse, tyakṣan deham cannot mean that the Lord gave up his body and died, since his body is full of eternity, knowledge and bliss. Thus Mahā-varāha Purāṇa says:
sarve nityāḥ śāśvatāś ca dehās tasya parātmanaḥ
hānopādāna-rahitā naiva prakṛtijāḥ kvacit
paramānanda sandohā jṣāna-mātraś ca sarvataḥ
All the forms of the Lord are eternal, appearing constantly within the material world with bodies of Paramātmā, without any destructible elements made of prakṛti.
This is confirmed in Madhva’s commentary in which he quotes śruti:
vāsudevaḥ saṅkarṣaṇaḥ pradumno ’niruddho haṁso matsyaḥ kurmo varāho narasiṁho vāmano rāmo rāmo rāmaḥ kṛṣṇo buddhaḥ kalki rahaṁ
śatadhā’ haṁ sahasradhā ‘ham ito’ aham ananto ‘haṁ naivete jāyante naite mriyante naiṣāṁ bandho na muktiḥ sarve eva hyete pūrṇā ajarā amṛtāḥ paramānandāḥ
I am Vāsudeva, Saṅkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, Aniruddha, Haṁsa, Matsya ,Kūrma, Varāha, Narasiṁha, Vāmana, Rāma, Paraśurāma, Balarāma, Kṛṣṇa, Buddha, and Kalki. I have hundreds and thousands of forms in this word. I am infinite. These forms are not born nor do they die. They are not conditioned nor do they become liberated. All of them are complete, ageless and deathless, full of the highest bliss.
govindaṁ sac-cidānanda-vigrahaṁ vṛndāvana-sura-bhuruha-talāsīnam
Govinda is an eternal form of knowledge and bliss, seated under a desire tree in Vṛndāvana. Gopāla-tāpanī Upaniṣad
ṛtaṁ satyaṁ paraṁ brahma puruṣaṁ nṛ-keśari-vigraham
The form of man-lion is truly the eternal, supreme Brahman.
Nṛsiṁha-tāpanī Upaniṣad
kṛṣṇa-dyumaṇi nimloce gīrṇeṣv ajagareṇa ha
kiṁ nu naḥ kuśalaṁ brūyāṁ gata-śrīṣu gṛheṣv aham
Since Kṛṣṇa has disappeared like the sun, how can I describe the condition of us, his friends, devoid of splendor, whose houses have been swallowed by the snake of lamentation? SB 3.2.7
pradarśyātapta-tapasām avitṛpta-dṛśāṁ nṛṇām
ādāyāntar adhād yas tu sva-bimbaṁ loka-locanam
The Lord, having shown his form, the center of attraction for all eyes, then took that form and disappeared from the men who had not performed austerities but had attained the Lord’s mercy, and were continually craving a vision of his form. SB 3.2.11
jayati jana-nivāso devakī-janma-vādo
yadu-vara-pariṣat svair dorbhir asyann adharmam
sthira-cara-vṛjina-ghnaḥ su-smita-śrī-mukhena
vraja-pura-vanitānāṁ vardhayan kāma-devam
Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa lives eternally among the cowherd men and the Yādavas, and is conclusively both the son of Devakī and Yaśodā. He is the guide of the Yadu dynasty and the cowherd men, and with his mighty arms he kills everything inauspicious, in Vraja, Mathurā and Dvārakā. By his presence he destroys all things inauspicious for all living entities, moving and inert, and the suffering of separation of the inhabitants of Vraja and Dvārakā. His blissful smiling face always increases the desires of the gopīs of Vṛndāvana and women of Mathurā and Dvārakā. He remains eternally in this situation. SB 10.90.48
There are many statements in the śruti and smṛti showing that the Lord has an eternal form. Thus if we take this verse to mean that Kṛṣṇa gave up his body, it does not recognize the contradiction to previous and later statements. Persons who take such a meaning have a demonic mentality and are cheated of the nectar of prema-bhakti. If the reading is nūnam (instead of sphītam), it means certainly (nu) lesser (ūnam), and modifies body (deham). This refers to an aṁśa of Kṛṣṇa, Nārāyaṇa. When Kṛṣṇa appeared, Nārāyaṇa appeared from Vaikuṇṭha and entered into Kṛṣṇa’s form. Now to have Nārāyaṇa again return to Vaikuṇṭha, he separated (tyakṣan) Nārāyaṇa from his own body. According to the Sandarbha, the phrase means “giving the body of the earth (deham) to the devatās like Brahmā for protecting.”
Purport
In this verse the word
tyakṣyan
is very significant in relation to Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s leaving His body. Since He is the eternal form of existence, knowledge and bliss, His body and His Self are identical. Therefore how is it possible that He would leave His body and then disappear from the vision of the world? There is a great controversy amongst the nondevotees or Māyāvādīs about the mysterious disappearance of the Lord, and the doubts of those men with a poor fund of knowledge have been very elaborately cleared by Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī in his
Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha.
According to
Brahma-saṁhitā,
the Lord has many forms. It is stated therein that the Lord has innumerable forms, and when He appears within the vision of the living entities, as Lord Kṛṣṇa actually appeared, all such forms amalgamate with Him. Besides all these infallible forms, He has His universal form, as manifested before Arjuna on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra. Here in this verse the word
sphītam
is also used, which indicates that He left His gigantic universal form called the
virāṭ-rūpa,
not His primeval, eternal form, because there is hardly any possibility of His changing His form of
sac-cid-ānanda.
This simple understanding is at once realized by the devotees of the Lord, but those who are nondevotees, who perform hardly any devotional service to the Lord, either do not understand this simple fact or purposely raise a controversy to defeat the eternity of the transcendental body of the Lord. This is due to the defect called the cheating propensity of the imperfect living entities.
By practical experience also, it is seen, up to the present day, that the Lord’s transcendental form is worshiped by devotees in different temples, and all the devotees of the Lord factually realize that the form of the Deity in the temple is nondifferent from the form of the Lord. This inconceivable performance of the internal potency of the Lord is described in
Bhagavad-gītā
(7.25)
:
nāhaṁ prakāśaḥ sarvasya yoga-māyā-samāvṛtaḥ.
The Lord reserves the right of not being exposed to everyone. In the
Padma Purāṇa
it is said,
ataḥ śrī-kṛṣṇa-nāmādi na bhaved grāhyam indriyaiḥ.
The name and form of the Lord cannot be perceived by the material senses, but when He appears within the vision of the mundane people He assumes the form of the
virāṭ-rūpa.
This is an additional material exhibition of form and is supported by the logic of a subject and its adjectives. In grammar, when an adjective is taken away from the subject, the subject it modifies does not change. Similarly, when the Lord quits His
virāṭ-rūpa,
His eternal form does not change, although there is no material difference between Himself and any one of His innumerable forms. In the Fifth Canto it will be seen how the Lord is worshiped in different planets in His different forms, even now, and how He is worshiped in different temples of this earth also.
Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī and Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura have very elaborately explained this incident of the Lord’s disappearance in their commentaries, quoting various authentic versions of Vedic literatures. We purposely do not include them all here to avoid an increase in the volume of this book. The entire matter is explained in
Bhagavad-gītā,
as quoted above: the Lord reserves the right of not being exposed to everyone. He always keeps Himself out of the vision of the nondevotees, who are devoid of love and devotion, and thus He puts them still further away from the Lord. The Lord appeared on the invitation of Brahmā, who prayed before the Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, and therefore when the Lord appeared, all the forms of Viṣṇu amalgamated with Him, and when the mission was fulfilled, all of them disintegrated from Him in the usual course.