Now Rūpa wants to establish two things about the gopīs: they are fit for Kṛṣṇa and for no one else, and they are His eternal beloveds. To do it he nails down a point he made before — that their apparent 'ordinariness' was only a display of māyā — introducing the verse with 'tathā ca' [and so too...].

He cites the verse by its opening words, 'nāyaṁ śriyo'ṅga...'

Earlier, with the line 'these alone are truly embodied,' the passage had already shown how the gopīs' love towers over that of liberation-seekers, of the liberated, and of ordinary devotees.

And there, with 'where do these women stand...,' the ground of the argument — the seeming gulf between the gopīs and Kṛṣṇa — was laid out.

Now for the clincher. Look at the praiser, Uddhava: from the first word to the last, nothing but deep devotion to the gopīs shows in him. The qualifier 'in the Paramātman' is set right here on Kṛṣṇa. Read 'the gopīs and their husbands' and the charge that they were unfaithful collapses. And 'who gave up their own kin and the respectable path' shows they let worldly ties and dharma go for Kṛṣṇa's sake alone — so their conduct comes out spotless, in its proper place in the sequence. Put it all together and no rival reading of the verse can stand.

Rather, this is the one meaning that holds — and here it is.

'These women' means the forest-dwelling ladies of Vṛndāvana, Śrī Rādhā foremost. And 'where!' asks it in wonder — see how immeasurably high they stand.

And 'where are the others!' — all the rest, lacking any such deep clinging to Him, are the ones actually spoiled by fickleness. So the 'fault' the world pinned on the gopīs really belongs to everyone else.

That is exactly why the mahābhāva known as rūḍha-bhāva lives in these gopīs and in no one else.

This glosses the earlier line: 'but my Lord extends the highest good in person, even to someone who neither knows Him nor tastes His greatness.' 'The good' here is the best of all blessings.

So 'extends' (tanoti) simply means: He gives it to them in full, generous measure.

But turn to these gopīs. They drink in His form directly, a form whose nature is glory itself — recall 'what austerities did the gopīs perform...' And out of sheer longing for Him they hand over their own selves and everything theirs — recall 'their minds fixed on Me, their lives in Me.' With devotees like that, it is Kṛṣṇa Himself who ends up in their debt. That is the real point.

Now, going beyond even everything said so far, Rūpa gives the verse 'nāyaṁ śriyaḥ...' Here begins the comment on the verse proper.

The little word 'u' carries a note of amazement.

Reading aṅga as 'on His body,' i.e. on the chest of the Lord of Vaikuṇṭha: even for her who lives right there, whose love is boundless, who is renowned as Śrī herself, His own dearest — even for her, this favor is missing. That is, the dazzling fullness of beauty, fine qualities, majesty, love, and sweetness [that the gopīs have] is not hers.

If it is missing even for such a Lakṣmī, then for the women of heaven — those living in Vaikuṇṭha, whose scent and sheen match the golden lotus that grows there — it is missing all the more. Their lotus-scent-and-sheen only points to the whole set of marvels they carry.

That being the case — 'how much less any others!'

'Others' means every other sort of woman there is — and they are ruled out from far, far off.

And it is not as though this favor is on open display in the gopīs at every moment.

It shows itself when the right occasion comes — and so he adds 'rāsotsave...,' at the festival of the rāsa dance.

'asya' means Kṛṣṇa's — as He shines forth right there beside the gopīs. (The genitive here runs on into the next sentence.)

The gopīs are the ones whose necks Śrī Govinda's staff-like arm caught, and who won that glory by it. Of these women, the favor 'rose up' (udagāt) — meaning: though it exists forever, it simply came out into the open then.

So, once the gopīs are settled as unlike everyone else in every way, their being the eternal beloveds of Śrī Kṛṣṇa — who is Himself unlike everyone in every way — falls right into place. Like belongs to like.

And from that all-round uniqueness, Kṛṣṇa's supreme Godhood stands out as nothing else does — and, matching it, so does these women's supreme Lakṣmī-hood. So their outshining every other Lakṣmī is exactly what one should expect. That is the import.

So understand: the other beloveds who will be taken up later — the sādhana-perfected, the sages who became gopīs, and their kind — are not entered on this roll, because here they count only as secondary.