Viśvanātha opens his commentary with his own benedictory verse to Hari with Rādhā. Kṛṣṇa sweats even while the restless corner of Rādhā's glance fans him like a breeze; he trembles even while lodged inside the city of her own radiance. The paradox is the point: what should cool and settle him only heats and stirs him. (The sentence continues in s2.)

The verse completes: though Rādhā makes Kṛṣṇa drink the nectar of her smile again and again, he only thirsts the more. All three actions — the fanning, the housing, the giving-to-drink — are done by Śrī Rādhā, yet each deepens rather than stills his longing. May that Hari grant us delight.

Viśvanātha now begins his second benedictory verse, praising Rūpa's speech as a divine river (named fully in s4). Two śleṣa epithets describe it: its rows of ornaments — the śaṅkara (double-meaning) figures — are praised at every step by those who plunge in with their intellect; and its clear water is the deep resonance (dhvani) of thick rasa. Each phrase reads both as a real river and as Rūpa's eloquence. (Completed in s4.)

The verse completes: that divine river — the nectar of Śrī Rūpa's words, described above — may it enter my heart and utterly shatter its burning grief. Viśvanātha prays that Rūpa's eloquence, flooding his mind, will wash away every torment.

Viśvanātha opens his commentary by bowing. He offers repeated obeisance to the feet of Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī. The word "those" (tebhyaḥ) waits for the next line, which will say which feet — the ones whose opinion is described there.

This line completes the bow of the last line. Whose feet does he bow to? Those of the ācāryas who are as deep as ten million oceans, and whose very opinion — their settled teaching — is nectar-mercy for the reader. So the namaskāra is not to Jīva alone as a name, but to that deep, merciful line of understanding.

Viśvanātha now points ahead to a proof he will quote. In Jīva Gosvāmī's own commentary there is one short verse — a single kārikā — that cuts through the entire flood of doubt on the point at hand.

He tells us what that doubt-cutting kārikā establishes. Right here, in this very opening verse, it is stated plainly that Kṛṣṇa stands in the highest excellence — his supremacy is not left to inference but declared openly.

A pointer word. Viśvanātha says "it is as follows" to announce that he is about to quote Jīva's doubt-cutting kārikā in full.

This is the kārikā itself. Some of the book was written by the author's own wish and some at another's request; but whatever is connected in sequence should be read in its proper order of before and after. The verse thus tells the reader how the work hangs together, so that the mixed origins do not confuse its arrangement.

Here begins another of Viśvanātha's own opening verses, and this line only sets its stage. It points to two places in the book: the passage that defines parakīyā love and the passage that defines mahābhāva. The relative "where" leaves the sentence hanging; the next line will say what is done in those two places.

This completes the verse begun in the last line. In those two sections — on parakīyā and on mahābhāva — the gopīs' giving up of their own kinfolk and of the respectable path of the elders is praised as something real and actual, not merely apparent. Viśvanātha notes this as one of the book's boldest and most cherished teachings.

Viśvanātha now speaks of himself. Delighted by that very teaching — that the gopīs' renunciation is real — he was drawn to the whole work, from its opening to its close. The sentence continues into the next line, which will say what that delight moved him to do.

This completes the verse. Even though the book is hard to penetrate, its very radiance — the brilliance of the ujjvala rasa it carries — makes him long to explain it over and over. The difficulty does not deter him; the beauty draws him back repeatedly.

Another self-effacing line. Viśvanātha describes himself as one who holds only a tiny trace of the mercy contained in the dust of Rūpa Gosvāmī's lotus feet. He claims no more than this least fragment of grace as his qualification. The sentence runs on into the next line.

This closes the verse of humility. Whatever he babbles here in his commentary, he begs the ācāryas — those oceans of mercy — to forgive it. Calling his own words mere prattle and them oceans of mercy, he lays down any claim of authority before beginning the work.

This is Viśvanātha's long lead-in to the opening verse. He first heaps praise on the author, Rūpa Gosvāmī: ornament of every connoisseur's glad heart, the Indra of all poets, crest-jewel of the rasikas. Then he explains why Rūpa writes again. Overwhelmed by the joy of endless talk of the great devotees, and having already served out the nectar of bhakti-rasa in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, he now wants to delight his most intimate friends once more. So he means to display the ujjvala rasa — a rasa almost unseen even in that earlier book, and deeply secret — as though lifting a shining sapphire out of the casket of his own heart (the pun on the title Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi). And with a single stroke of words he praises two at once as supreme over all: his cherished Lord, Śrī Bhagavān, and his own elder brother, the great devotee. That double praise he performs as the auspicious opening, in the words "nāmākṛṣṭa."

Viśvanātha reads the deeper sense of "jayati" ("he is victorious") in the verse. It means the Lord stands supreme over all. And because the Lord is thus supreme, the author draws courage from him: even in the bold, risky task of bringing this most secret rasa to light, my resolve does not waver. That, Viśvanātha says, is the underlying intent of the word.

To support his reading of "jayati," Viśvanātha cites a parallel line, where "the son of the king of Vraja triumphs (jayati)" is used in just this sense of supreme presence, drawing forth the poet's own longing. He offers it as a model of the very usage of jayati he has just explained.

Viśvanātha finds a second layer in "jayati." Besides declaring the Lord's supremacy, the word quietly carries the speaker's own bowing: to say "he triumphs" is to imply "before him I bow down." So the single word does the work of an obeisance as well.

He backs the last point with a standard definition. An act counts as "obeisance" when it is fit to convey that one is lowering oneself before another. Since "jayati" — declaring another's supremacy — does exactly this, it qualifies as an implied obeisance. The maxim licenses reading the bow into the word.

Now Viśvanātha decodes the first word, nāmākṛṣṭa-rasajñaḥ, on the side where Kṛṣṇa is the cherished Lord. The "rasa-knowers drawn by his name alone" are the beautiful women of Vraja, the gopīs. Why they in particular? Because they are the ones most to be gratified, and because they are foremost among devotees. So Kṛṣṇa is "he by whose very name the gopī-rasikas are drawn."

Beyond the gopī-specific reading, Viśvanātha notes that the verse says "rasa-knowers" without any restriction. Read that broadly, it means Kṛṣṇa draws every rasa-knower there is — from all the avatāras (himself included) down through devotees of every kind (his own beloved included). And he draws them all by nothing but his own sweetness. Because he alone can do this, the verse quietly shows he is fit to be supreme over all.

Viśvanātha glosses the mūla's word śīlena. First he fixes the term: by the lexicon, śīla means pure, auspicious conduct. So "by his śīla" means by his own blessed behaviour, Kṛṣṇa constantly kindles the parental love of his father Nanda, making it flare up. Then a fine distinction: normally the child is the viṣaya, the object toward whom the parent's love flows. But Kṛṣṇa, by his conduct, becomes something more — the ālambana, the very support that stimulates and rekindles that love. He is at once the one loved and the one who fans the loving. The note below spells out the viṣaya/ālambana pair.

Viśvanātha decodes the mūla's nija-rūpotsava-dāyī and here the verse's pun (śleṣa) opens up — both readings are kept, not decided between. Plain reading: "by his own form" means by his beauty, and Kṛṣṇa gives a festival of joy to everyone who beholds it. Pun reading: "nija-rūpa" can also mean "those whose form is like his own" — the cowherd boys, his friends; and to them he gives a festival of joy. Both senses stand together: joy through his beauty, and joy given to his look-alike friends.

Viśvanātha adds yet another reading of the same phrase, again keeping it open. "His own" (nija) can also mean his servants; and to them Kṛṣṇa gives a festival of joy by his form — here "by his form" is taken as granting them the sight of himself. So the one compound nija-rūpotsava-dāyī now carries three senses side by side: joy through his beauty, joy to his look-alike friends, and joy to his servants through his darśana.

A short gloss of the mūla word sanātanātmā. It means: one whose very body — his ātmā, his form — is eternal, made of being, awareness, and joy (sac-cid-ānanda). Kṛṣṇa's form is not material or perishable but is that changeless reality itself.

Viśvanātha ties the whole gloss together. Read in order, the successive phrases of the verse have quietly shown Kṛṣṇa to be the object-support (viṣaya-ālambana) of each of the five devotional rasas in turn — ujjvala (with the gopīs), vātsalya (with Nanda), sakhya (with the friends), dāsya (with the servants), and śānta. Since he alone stands as the base of all five, his supremacy over everyone is thereby established. This is the point the commentary has been building toward.

Among the devotional moods the earlier one in the list always outranks the later, so the ujjvala-rasa — conjugal love — is the chief one. And here is why: the moment Kṛṣṇa, the object, is merely named, the shelters of that mood (the gopīs) are pulled toward him; through that a surplus of love is gained beyond every other relationship. So its abiding emotion, the rati called madhurā, is the most fully unfolded — for it climbs the whole ladder, rati, prema, sneha, māna, praṇaya, rāga, anurāga, mahābhāva, and stands fully revealed only there.

The verse says only 'rasajña,' knowers of rasa, in a general way — it does not name which rasa. Because the mood is left unspecified, it is being kept secret. This secrecy will be made plain in the next verse.

Now the second reading of the pun, the guru side. Take 'nāmākṛṣṭa-rasajña' as: he whose tongue (rasajña) is drawn in and mastered by the names Kṛṣṇa and so on. On this reading the tongue moves to chant those names with not even a trace of his own effort needed — and that is his utter supremacy too.

On the guru side, 'śīla' means his very nature. By that nature he kindles the joy of the good, the saintly, and the learned, and raises it to a high pitch.

On the guru side, 'nija-rūpa' is read as his own people — those marked as belonging to him, his own followers. To them he gives festival, joy.

On the guru side, 'sanātanātmā' is unpacked as: he whose self, his very form, is named Sanātana — that is, Sanātana Gosvāmī.

A reading of the verse pointing to Śrī Mahāprabhu is also to be folded in here.

And that Mahāprabhu reading should be taken up first of all.

The Mahāprabhu reading works like this: the self of Sanātana — my excellent elder brother, Sanātana Gosvāmī — is the eternal Lord (Sanātana), who has taken him up as his very own body. That is the point.

And the account runs the same way in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta as well.

On the Mahāprabhu reading of 'nija-rūpotsava-dāyī': through his own forms — as if these were other bodies of himself, namely Śrī Advaita and the others and Dāmodara-svarūpa and the others — his nature is to give the excellent sacrifice, a yajña that is virtually saṅkīrtana, and to hand it out among all people. That is the man whose nature this is.

The Amara-kośa lists 'yajña' along with satra, adhvara, and yāga as words for sacrifice.

A further reading: through his own form named Rūpa — his devotee Rūpa Gosvāmī — he is the giver of festival. And there is a sense that the goddess of speech herself shaped, in the line 'but Rūpa is that very one himself'; that too should be understood here.