Jīva picks up the verse's word 'rasena' ('by rasa') as the phrase he will now explain.

The bare word 'rasa' here means the rasa that is made of prema — and not just any prema, but the love that stands above every other kind of love. So 'by rasa' means 'by the mood built out of the highest love'.

The passive verb 'utkṛṣyate' looks like a plain 'is raised,' but a causative meaning is tucked inside it. So read it as 'is made to shine forth as superior.' Rasa does not just find Kṛṣṇa's form high — it actively displays it as the highest.

Why does rasa raise Kṛṣṇa's form? Because this raising is simply what rasa is. 'The condition of rasa' means the very nature of rasa. It is in rasa's grain to display Kṛṣṇa as supreme.

Spelling out that nature: rasa shows Kṛṣṇa's form — and Kṛṣṇa's form alone — as the superior one. That is what 'this is the condition of rasa' comes to.

To back this up, Jīva points to what was said on the Kurukṣetra pilgrimage — spoken by Kṛṣṇa's queens who were not among the eight chief queens. Their words follow.

The queens declare: 'O chaste lady, we do not want world-empire, nor Indra's throne, nor the enjoyment of both, nor mystic powers, nor Brahmā's post, nor endless liberation — nor even Hari's own exalted status.' They list every high reward and reject each one.

'What we do long for,' the queens say, 'is to carry on our heads the dust of this mace-bearer Kṛṣṇa's beautiful feet — that dust made fragrant with the kuṅkuma from Śrī's breasts.' They want the foot-dust, and specifically the foot-dust that carries Śrī's scent.

This verse widens the picture: the women of Vraja, the tribal Pulinda women, the grasses and creepers, the cows, and the cowherds — all of them long for the touch of the feet of the great soul Kṛṣṇa as he goes about herding the cows. Everyone in Vraja, human and non-human, craves that foot-touch.

Now Jīva defines the rejected items one by one. 'Sāmrājya' means the rank of a world-emperor. 'Svārājya' means the office of Indra, king of heaven.

'Bhojya' (enjoyment) means being entitled to enjoy both of those together — the pleasures of world-empire and of Indra's throne at once.

'Vairājya' means shining in glory through the mystic perfections — the powers that begin with aṇimā, the ability to become infinitely small, and the rest of the eight siddhis.

'Pārameṣṭhya' means the post of Prajāpati — the seat of Brahmā, the highest creator within the universe.

'Ānantya' (endlessness) refers to the Taittirīya method of measuring bliss: start with the joy of one human being, then multiply by a hundred at each higher rung until you reach the topmost measurable joy, that of Brahmā. Beyond even that, the Upaniṣad says of the Supreme Brahman, 'from which words turn back' — pointing to a bliss no counting can reach. Even that limitless bliss of Brahman is included in what the queens set aside.

To sum up: 'hareḥ padam' means the very status of Hari, the Lord of Śrī — including even the liberation of sāmīpya, living near God, and the rest. The queens reject all of that too. 'We do not desire it' means 'we have no wish to make it ours, to hold it in our grasp.'

Someone objects: 'Then what greater thing is left that you do want?' The queens answer: of Kṛṣṇa the mace-bearer, whom everyone knows as our husband, we long for only one thing — to carry the dust of his beautiful feet upon our heads. Not rulership, not liberation; just his foot-dust.

And even within that foot-dust, the queens single out something finer still: the dust that is enriched with the scent of Śrī's breast-kuṅkuma — dust that has taken on a special glory from that fragrance. That, above all, is what they crave. So there is a treasure inside the treasure.

An objector breaks in: 'But wait — surely it is the status of the Lord of Śrī himself that is scented with Śrī's breast-kuṅkuma. And since you queens have already renounced nearness to him and all such things, you have by that very act thrown away the one thing you now say you want. You contradict yourselves.'

The objection presses a second horn: 'And if the "Śrī" in this verse just means Rukmiṇī, then that scent is already yours — you queens are right there with her in Dvārakā. So there is nothing left to long for on that reading either.'

So the objection actually forces the answer. The 'Śrī' whose breast-scent the queens crave cannot be the Lord's own status (they renounced that), nor Rukmiṇī (they already have that). It must be a Śrī altogether different from both. The dust they want is the dust perfumed by that unique Śrī's breasts.

So, to make clear who this unique Śrī is, the point now needs one more specification. Jīva says the next quoted verse supplies it.

For that specification, the queens' words are the verse beginning 'vraja-striyaḥ' — 'the women of Vraja.' Jīva now takes up that verse.

The Pulinda women see kuṅkuma on the grass — kuṅkuma that first colored Kṛṣṇa's reddish lotus-feet, and before that had adorned his beloved's breasts, now brushed off onto the grass by his feet. Struck with love-sickness at the sight, they smear that grass-kuṅkuma on their own faces and breasts, and so throw off their torment and are made complete. Even the tribal women are fulfilled by the trace of Kṛṣṇa's beloved's kuṅkuma.

Reading it together with the gopīs' own words, the present-tense 'that which the Vraja women desire' is really to be understood as a past 'that which they desired.' Jīva is settling the tense of the queens' quotation.

Why keep the present tense at all, then? Because the present-tense 'desire' hints that their longing never breaks off — it flows on unbroken. The grammar quietly pictures a craving that has no end.

Why do the queens mention the lowly Pulinda women? To imply something about themselves: if even tribal women can reach this, then surely we too are fit for it. Naming the humble is a modest way of claiming their own eligibility.

'Grasses and creepers' refers to plants like dūrvā grass. Jīva just fixes which plants are meant.

How can mere grass and creepers have such an experience of Kṛṣṇa? Only through the power of his feet — feet that stay unbrokenly perfumed with that kuṅkuma's fragrance. It is the touch of those scented feet, and nothing else, that lets even plants partake. This is the underlying sense.

What kind of longing is theirs? It is the pure-emotion kind. Scripture itself states that 'by unmixed love alone the gopīs, the cows, the trees, and the deer' attained Kṛṣṇa. That very statement shows their longing runs on feeling, not on qualification or effort.

Why does the verse also name the cows and the cowherds herding them? Some of those cowherds — the intimate playmate-friends and their like — do gladly assist Kṛṣṇa's loving pastimes. Yet because they are male, they are not eligible for this particular breast-scent relish. Naming them is meant to imply exactly that unfitness. So the list quietly separates who can and cannot share in this.

Here is the upshot. Of Śrī — the goddess famous as Kṛṣṇa's would-be lover — scripture reports only her longing for him, never her actual union with him. She desires; she does not attain the intimate contact. That gap is the key Jīva is about to use.

The cowherd boys marvel: 'O Lord, we cannot tell whose great fortune this is — the right to touch the dust of your feet. For it is a privilege that Śrī herself, the loveliest of women, chased: giving up all other desires and holding a long vow, she performed austerities just to gain it.' Even the goddess of fortune had to do penance for what Vraja touches freely.

A second fragment in the same vein: 'he who is worshipped by Śrī herself.' Again Śrī is shown as the worshipper reaching toward Kṛṣṇa, not as one already united with him.

Nor can one say the Śrī meant is Rukmiṇī and that she is united with Kṛṣṇa there. Rukmiṇī has no place in this Vraja setting. Jīva rules out the Rukmiṇī reading.

The reason: Rukmiṇī belongs to a different time and a different place — Dvārakā, a later period — not to the Vṛndāvana of this pastime. Time and place both cut her out, so she cannot be the Śrī here.

Nor would it make sense for the Vraja women to hanker after a link with Lakṣmī-Śrī. Scripture says that 'the favor of Kṛṣṇa's most intimate love was not granted even to Śrī who rests on his chest.' Since the gopīs are declared even higher than Śrī, they would gain nothing by wanting her status. So this rules out Lakṣmī too.

So here is the resolution. The Matsya, Skanda, and other Purāṇas rule: 'Rukmiṇī in Dvārakā, but Rādhā in the Vṛndāvana forest.' When Rādhā is listed alongside Rukmiṇī, it is only on the shared ground that both are Kṛṣṇa's potency. And on the principle of the maxim 'scripturally the teaching is like that of Vāmadeva' — just as scripture teaches the Supreme Lord's oneness with great Indra, and with Durgā too — in the 'worship-as-oneself' scriptures Rādhā is taught as non-different from Kṛṣṇa himself. That is why she can be listed with the others yet be utterly distinct.

Rādhā, then, stands apart: she is complete in every respect. She is Kṛṣṇa's very own Lakṣmī — the true Śrī of the verse. This is the identification Jīva has been building toward.

And in the same vein, Jīva says, scripture confirms it — introducing the next quotation.

The verse declares: 'The goddess Rādhikā is said to be made wholly of Kṛṣṇa, the supreme deity. She comprises all the Lakṣmīs, she is all beauty, the supreme enchantress.' Rādhā contains every Lakṣmī within herself.

'And so forth' — that is, this and the following lines, on the authority of the Bṛhad-gautamīya-tantra. Jīva names his source for the previous verse.

So the conclusion: among all these women there shines one Śrī, famed as Rādhā and utterly unlike any other. It is she, and she alone, whom the queens' statement is really about. Their words point to Rādhā's breast-kuṅkuma all along.

As an example, Jīva says — introducing the next quotation as evidence.

The gopīs say among themselves: 'Surely by this particular gopī the Lord Hari, the supreme controller, has been perfectly worshipped.' They sense that one of them has pleased Kṛṣṇa above the rest.

The verse continues: '...since Govinda, leaving all the rest of us behind and being specially pleased with her, led her away to a secret place.' Kṛṣṇa chose this one gopī above them all. Her worship — her ārādhana — is why she is called Rādhā.

And likewise the passage beginning 'the doe, having approached him...' — another Bhāgavatam line Jīva adduces in the same connection. He cites only its opening.

So this much is now clear. The queens are praying: may that fragrance-enriched foot-dust — the dust laden with the scent of Rādhā's supreme love — now show itself in us as well. Their whole longing has been laid bare: they want a share in Rādhā's own prema-scented treasure.

And it is not only the scented foot-dust they want. They want more: the direct touch of Kṛṣṇa's feet themselves. Jīva reads the third verse ('vraja-striyaḥ') as adding this second, higher object of longing.

'And so we too desire it' — that is, we queens long for the same foot-touch that all of Vraja longs for. This closes the first way of reading the verse: foot-dust and foot-touch are two distinct things they crave.

Or else — a second reading, left standing beside the first — 'foot-touch' is not a separate object at all but a description of the foot-dust: 'the dust that has touched his feet.' On this reading the queens crave one thing, the feet-touched dust, not two.

On this second reading, foot-dust and foot-touch come to the same thing: the touch is the sure, inseparable outcome of the dust, so the two are really one. This still belongs to the suspended alternative — Jīva does not choose between the two readings; both stand.

How is Kṛṣṇa described in that verse? By the word 'mahātman,' 'great soul.' Jīva unpacks it: his self, his nature, is higher than the nature of every other being anywhere; his very nature is the shining-forth of beauty and all such glories. 'Great soul' thus points to Kṛṣṇa's supreme, beauty-radiant nature.

This supreme beauty is confirmed by Śuka's own words: 'there the Lord shone with surpassing splendor in the company of the gopīs.' The verse's 'great soul' language matches Śuka's testimony that Kṛṣṇa's beauty blazed among them.

So it was rightly said — in this very work, verse 1.2.58 — that 'even among them, the very best of the one-pointed devotees are those whose minds Govinda has carried away.' The whole discussion confirms that earlier line about the topmost devotees.

And the mūla's own phrase 'the form of Kṛṣṇa' is not just naming his body — it points, by way of indication, to that supreme beauty of his. Jīva ties his whole reading back to the root verse: 'Kṛṣṇa's form' signals Kṛṣṇa's beauty.

One last note. Although this whole section really belongs to the perfected devotees and their realized experience, still others too may, by adopting that same vision, come to share in it. It has been retold here for that reason — so that aspirants, not only the perfected, may take it to heart. This closes Jīva's commentary.