Jīva sets the scene. When Kṛṣṇa went off to the Yadus to kill Kaṁsa, the gopīs were somehow brought to the houses of Bhīṣmaka and other kings and passed off as their daughters. That did not satisfy them. Only when they win the Lord of Dvārakā — recognized as the very son of Vraja's king — is the moment right. So Rūpa gives the verse as that Lord's own words: 'tavātra…'.

This one verse works as a token (upalakṣaṇa): though it speaks of a single moment, it stands in for the whole 'fulfilled-longing' stage — the element that brings the entire story to completion.

Let me spell it out, says Jīva. There came a time when Yaśodā, the Queen of Vraja, arrived in Dvārakā.

And it came out that Candrāvalī was really Rādhā's own sister, as had always been the case back in Gokula.

Then Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā were married, and a dialogue passed between them. Kṛṣṇa says: 'O mistress of my life, ask — what dearer thing than this could I do for you?'

And now Rādhā's reply:

Rādhā answers: My friends have all joined me, radiant with their natural sweet love; my mother has come; my mother-in-law the Queen of Vraja praises me; and here in a Vṛndāvana bower this union with you has turned to pure delight. What dearer thing than this is left for me to want?

Even after saying this, Rādhā suspects that the Vṛndāvana she sees there is only a fabricated one. So she speaks again:

Rādhā: There is that blessed Mathurā land, wrapped in wild woods that breathe out the fragrance of your play, ringed round with sweetness. Go there — surrounded by us, our hearts melting in the trembling cowherd-girl mood, your flute lighting your face — and take up your sport. (She asks for the real Vṛndāvana, not the copy.)

Here 'māthurī' means 'the land lying close to the city of Madhurā (Mathurā)'.

And that 'lying-near' sense comes from one of the taddhita (secondary) suffixes in the group grammarians call cāturarthika, 'used in four senses'.

And 'that earth' in the verse is to be taken as the whole splendor of Vṛndāvana.

Jīva reads the first verse phrase by phrase as a checklist of freedoms. 'My friends have joined me' — every other tie has dropped away. 'My mother' plus Candrāvalī-now-her-sister — no more co-wife jealousy. 'My mother-in-law' — even Jaṭilā, who fancied herself the old mother-in-law, no longer opposes but favors her, now that she follows Kṛṣṇa. 'Vṛndāvana' — if even this copy is so, how much more the real one; so no constraint of place. Add it up: Rādhā is shown free of every last dependence.

And 'this union with you has turned all delight' — full of endless marvels — shows the very peak of overflowing enjoyment.

And so the standing definition — 'the enriched (samṛddhimat) reunion of a young couple who could hardly hope to see each other' — is exactly fulfilled here.

That settled for the first verse, the second verse gives the same conclusion even more strongly, by the 'how much more' force.

Here Kṛṣṇa's consent — 'Beloved, so be it' — is reconciled this way: by fanning out into many simultaneous bodies (kāya-vyūha), he appears at once in Dvārakā and in Vṛndāvana. So both scenes hold.

And she [with him] is present in Dvārakā as a crowned queen, beside her dearmost in the form each pastime needs, but in Vṛndāvana as a cowherd-goddess. Same reality, two forms for two places.

But understand this: the gopīs were really married to Kṛṣṇa himself, with the Queen of Vraja as witness; their apparent marriages to other men were sheer illusion. You, Yaśodā, coming with your son Kṛṣṇa and your daughters-in-law Candrāvalī and the rest, had it proven through Paurṇamāsī and others and made public in Vraja.

That is just why, in Vṛndāvana-worship, the Tantras and such texts speak of these very gopīs being worshiped under names like Rukmiṇī — by devotees who regard the queens and the gopīs as one and the same.

So, on this 'queens and gopīs are one' reading, the doctrine of the Lalita-mādhava is to be placed in an occasional world-cycle (kādācitka-kalpa).

Now the other reading — 'by difference,' belonging to the usual kalpa and following the Bhāgavata — is accepted here as well. So at the Kurukṣetra reunion, in the mood called modana, there is the line 'ah, fair Sarasvatī stood frozen on Kuru's plain,' and so on; and there is this verse of the Uddhava-sandeśa, in Kṛṣṇa's own longing voice: chancing on the path of your eyes, face bright as the flute, mind eaten by inner torment, myself grimed dusky — in the play-bower, my body rolling, worn out — in secret I will suddenly, with waves of streaming bliss, make you blossom again.

On this by-difference view, just as before, to bring the great separation to its close, Kṛṣṇa returns to Gokula after killing Dantavakra. Rūpa himself, gathering the Padma Uttara-khaṇḍa's statements, laid this out in his Saṅkṣepa-bhāgavatāmṛta.

And his revered elder brother Sanātana did the same in the Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī. First, then, the prose passage of the Padma Uttara-khaṇḍa:

Kṛṣṇa, after slaying Dantavakra, crossed the Yamunā and came to Nanda's Vraja. He greeted and comforted his old parents, was folded in their tear-choked embrace, bowed to and reassured all the elder gopas, and gratified everyone there with jewels and ornaments.

And what follows is from the Bhāgavata.

There, of Kṛṣṇa — whom the Vedas and the rest sing as one whose will always comes true — the resolve to return stands out clearly:

Seeing the gopīs so scorched with grief at his leaving, the best of the Yadus consoled them through loving messengers: 'I shall come back.'

Kṛṣṇa to Nanda: 'Go home to Vraja, dear father; and once we have given joy to our friends here, we too shall come to see your kinsmen who ache with love for us.'

Note the twist: 'to see them' really means 'to become the object of their sight' — that is, to let ourselves be seen by them.

It works like Brahmā's line, 'O infinite one, who can comprehend the greatness of your quality' [Bhāgavata 10.14.6]: there 'to comprehend' means 'to become the object of [others'] comprehension.' Same active-form-passive-sense idiom.

That very resolve, clear as it is, Uddhava too confirmed:

Uddhava: 'Acyuta will come to Vraja after a very long time; the Lord, master of the Sātvatas, will do what is dear to his parents.'

For what is dear to those two parents is always one thing only: to fondle him as their little boy. (So 'do what is dear to his parents' means: be there with them in Vraja.)

But in what the citizens of Dvārakā say, his coming to Vraja is stated flat out:

The Dvārakā citizens: 'O lotus-eyed one, when you set off to the Kurus, or to the Madhus [Mathurā], longing to see your friends…'

Here 'madhūn' means Mathurā — so Śrīdhara Svāmī's commentary.

And the 'friends' he went to see, at that time and place, are none but the residents of Vraja.

The line 'Hari, by yogic power, carried all the people' [Bhāgavata 10.50.51] — with its word 'all' — shows that the Mathurā people entered Dvārakā.

'O best of the Kurus, Lord Balabhadra mounted his chariot and, longing and eager to see his friends, went to Nanda's Gokula.'

— again, because the word 'friend' (suhṛd) is used there too [for the Vraja folk].

And it is precisely the killing of Dantavakra that sets the boundary for his coming to Vraja — that is the terminus after which he returns.

For instance, at the Kurukṣetra pilgrimage, Kṛṣṇa himself says to the Vraja-goddesses:

Kṛṣṇa at Kurukṣetra: 'Do you still remember us, dear friends — us who went away, and stayed away so long, to serve our own people, our minds set on wiping out the enemy?'

By the close of Dantavakra's killing, with only the destruction of the enemy faction still outstanding, he fixed the terminus for coming to Vraja with his own people.

And this Kurukṣetra pilgrimage came before Dantavakra was killed. For at the very time of Dantavakra's killing (along with Sālva's), the Pāṇḍavas went into forest exile — as is well known from the Vana-parva.

Right after the Pāṇḍavas came back came the Bhārata war, in which Bhīṣma and the others were killed.

That pilgrimage drew Bhīṣma and the rest together. And just as Baladeva's tīrtha-pilgrimage — recited in the text before the Kurukṣetra one — was completed on the day Duryodhana died, so this reunion falls not very long after Kaṁsa's death. (Jīva is dating the reunion within the epic timeline.)

For on that very pilgrimage Vasudeva said to Queen Kuntī:

Vasudeva to Kuntī: 'Sister, harried by Kaṁsa, we all scattered to every direction; only now, by providence, have we found our place again — and one another.'

But where exactly to place Dantavakra's killing must be reconciled in one of two ways — either by appealing to different kalpas, or by the Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī's mode of explanation — so that the apparent clash between the Bhāgavata and the Padma is dissolved. (Jīva leaves both routes standing.)

Either way, Kṛṣṇa's return to Vraja after Dantavakra's killing is something the Bhāgavata also accepts.

And right after that earlier verse, the Padma Uttara-khaṇḍa gives a further pair of verses:

'On the lovely bank of the Yamunā, ringed with holy trees, Keśava sported ceaselessly with the cowherd women.'

'Hari, in cowherd dress, in the joy of lovely play, bound fast by the rasa of love, dwelt here for two months.'

There, 'gopa-nārībhiḥ' is to be read as 'women of the gopa community' — the cowherd women themselves.

The compound works like 'nṛpa-vadhūbhiḥ' ('by royal brides') in Śuka's Third-Canto passage addressed to Devahūti — a caste-plus-noun compound of the same shape.

The word 'ceaselessly' (aniśam — day and night, openly) tells us that once the illusion of paramour-love had passed, it was open wedded union alone that now stood manifest.

The phrases 'leader of hundreds of women' and 'with hundreds of crores of young women' carry a suggestion: his ceaseless play with so many is known to all, yet there is not a trace of bashfulness or concealment about it. (Again: open, hence wedded.)

And this is just what he brings out in the verse beginning 'ramya' (lovely).

'Loveliness' here means: delightful to everyone. For if any part of the play were unseemly, that whole part would become a thing people condemn. Since it is 'lovely,' it is above reproach.

And it is just to say that here in Vraja love was nourished for absolutely everyone that he uses the phrase 'bound by love' (baddha-prema).

Then, right after, another prose passage: 'Then all the people there — Nanda and the rest, with their sons and wives, and the beasts, birds, and deer — by Vāsudeva's grace took on divine forms, mounted a celestial car, and reached the supreme Vaikuṇṭha world.'

'But Kṛṣṇa, having given to every dweller of Nanda-gopa's Vraja his supreme, faultless own abode, and praised in the heavens by throngs of gods, entered Dvāravatī [Dvārakā].'

— thus the Padma Purāṇa, 6.252.28–29.

But here is what this passage really means:

'Nanda and the rest, with their sons and wives' — the 'son' of King Nanda, the leader of that company, is Kṛṣṇa himself.

And though 'wife' plainly means Yaśodā, the very use of the word 'son' [for Kṛṣṇa] tells us that the entry there was made with them, in their own familiar forms — not as strangers transformed.

So 'bearing divine forms' is said with delight, and it means: the supreme radiance of their own essential forms shone out — not that they got some brand-new bodies.

And their 'entering the supreme Vaikuṇṭha by a celestial car' is put that way only to throw outsiders off the scent.

In truth, their entry was into a special, invisible manifestation of Vṛndāvana itself.

For it is precisely in Vṛndāvana that the Gopāla-tāpanī, the Vārāha, and the Bṛhad-gautamīya show such a manifestation of his eternal abode.

For when Kṛṣṇa came back from Varuṇa's world, he himself showed Nanda and the rest — right in Vṛndāvana, as their very own world — that special manifestation which is the form of their own special realm; and it is well known from the Tenth Canto that they were not carried off elsewhere by any celestial car.

To wit:

'But Nanda, seeing the world-guardian's transcendent glory and their bowing to Kṛṣṇa, spoke in astonishment to his kinsmen.'

'And the gopas, their minds now eager, taking him for the Lord, wondered: will the supreme Lord grant us our own subtle destination?'

'Out of compassion, to fulfill their longing, he thought this:'

'A person in this world, through ignorance, desire, and karma, wanders among high and low destinies and does not know his own true destination.'

'He showed the gopas his own world, the one beyond all darkness.'

'— that which is truth, knowledge, and infinite, the eternal Brahman-light, which composed sages behold when the guṇas fade.'

'They were led to the Brahma-pool, plunged in, and lifted out by Kṛṣṇa, and saw the world of Brahman — where Akrūra had gone before.'

'And Nanda and the rest, seeing that world, were sunk in supreme bliss; and seeing Kṛṣṇa there, praised by the Vedic hymns, they were struck with wonder.'

So the own-abode that he showed them there as their own — that very abode he later actually bestowed on them [in the Padma passage]. The showing and the giving are of one and the same place.

And 'led to the Brahma-pool' means: to the pool where Akrūra had once praised Kṛṣṇa. Led there by Kṛṣṇa, plunged in and lifted out again by him alone, they saw the world of that Brahman-in-human-form — that is, of Kṛṣṇa himself.

One might grant that 'brahma-loka' means only the Lord's world in a general sense — as we get from 'the eternal brahma-loka' in the Second Canto.

And the words 'subtle' and 'beyond darkness' do suggest that same transcendent world.

Yet the phrases 'our own goal', 'does not know his own goal', and 'Kṛṣṇa there' make it clear that this world is specifically the realm of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa — not some generic Lord's world.

That is exactly why they saw none of the other [Vaikuṇṭha] associates there — only their own [Vraja circle and Kṛṣṇa himself].

'Being praised by the Vedic hymns' — by hymns in the form of the Gopāla-tāpanī and such, in a way that fits his being Kṛṣṇa — is confirmed by that phrase 'Kṛṣṇa there'. The very hymns praising him are the Gopāla mantras.

And only this way does their sinking into supreme bliss make sense — for their one and only taste is for Kṛṣṇa, so their joy is in seeing him, not in a featureless Brahman.

But the reason they fail to recognize even their own world is given in that verse 'a person in this world… does not know his own destination.'

Just as 'people' (janāḥ) in the verse 'sālokya, sārṣṭi, sārūpya…' [Bhāgavata 3.29.13] means his devotees, so here too 'jana' means his own people — not humankind at large.

But here it is meant quite specifically. Kṛṣṇa says: 'Therefore this cowherd-village, which has taken shelter of me, has me for its lord, and is my own charge…'

'…I shall protect it by my own power; this is the vow I have taken up.'

This vow Kṛṣṇa held inwardly. Now if 'jana' meant just people in general, then his compassion would extend to everyone, and it would wrongly follow that the abode should be shown to absolutely everybody.

But no such universal showing happened; so 'jana' must not be read as 'everyone.'

So the sense is: this dearest own-person of mine, a dweller of Vraja, wandering in this material world among high and low births (god, beast, and the rest) that spring from ignorance, desire, and karma, and thinking of himself in a common, undifferentiated way, does not know his own goal that I am about to reveal — and this only because of my play that imitates the ordinary human world (lokavat-līlā).

It is from that very not-knowing — the loving not-knowing of those 'whose home, wealth, friends, dear ones, selves, sons, and very life are all for his sake' [Bhāgavata 10.14.30] — that the verse 'Nanda, seeing the transcendent glory…' was spoken. Their wonder comes precisely because pure love keeps them from treating him as God.

Therefore, the very world that was shown to them as their own is exactly the world they finally attained.

And in reaching that world, means like the celestial car accomplish nothing; the car was mentioned only to dazzle outsiders and to hide the truth from them. So it is rightly explained.

This is said about Vṛndāvana itself: 'My appearing and disappearing happen here, age after age'; and 'This place, O brāhmaṇa, is made of light, invisible to the fleshly eye.'

So, pointing to the eternal presence of the one who, having come back to Vraja, stays there, scripture sets down the phrase: 'where Kaṁsa's slayer sports amid the cows, the cowherds, and the cowherd-girls.'

In 'Kaṁsa-slayer' the agent-suffix carries a past sense — the killing is done — just as Indra is called 'Vṛtra-slayer' long after the deed. So even while he now sports eternally in Vraja, the epithet 'Kaṁsa-slayer' shows this is after his return.

This settled, the order in which the Vraja-goddesses attained him at that time is now analyzed as follows.

Thus at his departure for Mathurā, in the verse 'seeing them so scorched with grief…', he sent the message 'I shall come' through envoys — and, it is to be understood, through other such means as well.

As it is said:

'My beloveds, whose very selves are merged in me, barely, with the greatest difficulty, keep hold of their life-breath — sustained only by messages that I will return.'

And through Uddhava, by the earlier message 'there is no separation of you from me in any way' [Bhāgavata 10.47.29] and so on he sent word; and, not content with that, afterward, by repeating the word 'me' three times over — and there specifying 'Kṛṣṇa' — he conveyed:

'Fixing your mind on me — Kṛṣṇa — with every other thought stilled, constantly remembering me, you will soon attain me.'

And he taught this himself, in person, at the Kurukṣetra pilgrimage:

'Devotion to me leads all beings to immortality; and by good fortune your love for me — the very love that brings you to me — has arisen.'

And whatever he taught there, the gopīs were still not satisfied with it; so Śuka gives their plea:

'And they said: O lotus-naveled one, may your lotus feet — meditated in the heart by masters of yoga of fathomless wisdom, the very support that lifts up those fallen in the well of saṁsāra — ever arise in the minds of us, who are only householder women.'

This is the meaning: 'O lotus-naveled one, may your lotus feet arise [and stay] in our minds.'

Someone objects: for you who love him so utterly, what is remarkable about his feet arising in your minds? To this they reply, within the verse: his feet are to be meditated by great yogis — not managed by us.

How are they such yogis? 'Of fathomless wisdom' — their minds stay steady even when he is unseen, unlike us, who faint the moment we begin to meditate on him.

Objection: could not that meditation soothe your separation-pain the way it soothes their worldly pain? They answer: his feet are the rescue-rope only for those fallen in the well of saṁsāra — not for us, drowned in an ocean of separation; for when we meditate on him, all we feel is the separation itself.

Objection, as if from Kṛṣṇa: 'Then come right now and see my feet in Dvārakā, until I can come to you.' Anticipating this, they say 'of us householder women' — meaning women tied down to home and household people, who cannot simply travel to him.

So the import is: only if you yourself come and show us your own lotus feet — then, and only then, and forever, is there deliverance for us.

Guessing the listeners' eagerness — 'and then what happened?' — even though that chapter was already over, Śuka the son of Vyāsa himself adds:

'Having thus favored them, the Lord — who is the teacher and the goal of the gopīs — then asked after Yudhiṣṭhira and all his friends.'

'Having favored them' — exactly as they wished — and then Śuka spells out that favor: 'teacher of the gopīs' means the one who instructs [them] toward fulfilling their heart's desire.

And he names the desired end itself: 'goal' (gati) means the destination they are to reach.

That is, he himself is the supreme fruit [of all their striving].

Nor should you think this favor is shared equally with other devotees: though Yudhiṣṭhira had long been seated waiting at the door, Kṛṣṇa attended to him only afterward — the gopīs came first.

As for the verse's wording: he asked after 'that one' — Yudhiṣṭhira — and after 'all' the friends besides.

Now, how — having crossed the great separation — they attained him:

Kṛṣṇa himself says to Uddhava, in the Eleventh Canto, chapter twelve:

Kṛṣṇa to Uddhava: 'When Akrūra took me and Balarāma off to Mathurā, their hearts fastened on me with a deep, fierce love; tortured by the sharp pangs of separation from me, they could see nothing else for their comfort.'

'Those nights, spent with me — their dearmost — there in Vṛndāvana, went by like half a moment; but those same nights, O dear one, once bereft of me, stretched out for them long as an age.'

Here the past tenses — 'they saw', 'they became' — carry a point: now they no longer see him gone, nor do the nights drag as before. In other words, now there is no separation at all. (Present union is implied by the past tense of the old grief.)

Objection: their attainment of the Lord is not seen out in the open — how did it come about? The answer: they attained a special unmanifest manifestation, present in Vṛndāvana together with me. And so he says:

'They, their minds bound fast in attachment to me, no longer knew their own [belongings], their self, that, or this — just as sages in deep trance, or as rivers that have entered the ocean, lose all sense of name-and-form.'

They, though racked by that great separation, had their minds now bound by the union with me that came about after I killed Dantavakra. So they no longer registered 'their own' (the object of mine-ness), nor 'self' (the object of ego), nor 'this' (belonging to the manifest pastime) as separate things at all.

Rather, they experienced the two [self and Kṛṣṇa, manifest and unmanifest] only as one. That is the meaning.

For their experiencing the two selves — the one in each pastime — as non-different, an example is given:

Just as sages absorbed in the 'fourth' state (turya) in samādhi — though carrying within them the three states of waking (viśva), dreaming (taijasa), and deep sleep (prājña) — do not notice those states as separate, so with the gopīs. The mapping: turya-absorption is their union with Kṛṣṇa; the three states are the distinct selves that no longer register as separate.

Now, for their not registering the difference of the pastimes and such — the things they hold as 'mine' — the example is: 'as rivers in the ocean-water.'

Just as rivers do not tell apart their life on land from their life in the sea, but in both merely flow on as one with the ocean-water, so the gopīs did not tell apart the manifest and unmanifest pastime-states — they simply entered into me. Mapping: rivers are the gopīs, the ocean is Kṛṣṇa, the earth-course is the manifest pastime, the sea-course is the unmanifest.

But this example holds only for the one point — their not registering the pastime-difference — not for a total blank of all knowledge. It is like the Vedānta-sūtra's 'but the Lord's play is like [what we see] in the world' [2.1.33]: the comparison is exact only on its intended point, and no further.

And so 'name-and-form' — read as a collective-dvandva — means: they were 'as if entered' into that special unmanifest manifestation, which is made of his name and his story. The 'as if' matters: they did not literally merge and vanish; being non-different from him already, they were one with him, not dissolved into him.

It is as with the marriage of the sixteen thousand maidens and its consummation: as there, so here. That is the import.

So the author's position, backed by the Bhāgavata's agreement, is now taken up for a further examination:

The core question: this attainment of him in Vraja — how does the author hold it to be? As union with a husband (patitva), or as union with a paramour (upapatitva)?

The answer: judged by Kṛṣṇa's own known inner feeling, it is as husband-ship alone.

Two reasons. First, by composing the Lalita-mādhava in the other mode, he showed that the rasa stands firm precisely in the marriage. Second, he gave the very element that brings that marriage about the name 'fulfilled-longing' (pūrṇa-manoratha) — the name confirms the husband-reading.

And one must not think their marriage could happen only in the city of Dvārakā.

Nor may one say 'but not in Vraja.' For if the Queen of Vraja herself went there, and through her others became reliable witnesses too, then what difference remains between the city and Vraja? And if bringing these Kṛṣṇa-married gopīs to Vraja was approved right in front of the Queen of Vraja, then once they are brought to Vṛndāvana, married life is exactly what would follow — it could not be otherwise.

By the Bhāgavata's own intention as well, the rasa comes to its fullness precisely in this marriage-reading.

For at Kṛṣṇa's leaving for Mathurā, the gopīs cried: 'Let us go and stop Mādhava! What can the family elders and kinsmen do to us?'

'Casting off all shame, they wept aloud: Govinda! Dāmodara! Mādhava!'

By that conduct, from the very outset the gopīs were women whose love was already out in the open.

And later on, more openly still.

'They, their minds on me, their life-breath in me, having given up all bodily concern for my sake.'

'When Kṛṣṇa's envoy Uddhava had come, [the gopīs] had cast off all worldly concern.'

'Their shame gone'; 'a certain gopī, seeing a bee…'; 'she who abandoned her hard-to-leave kin and the very path of the noble…' — a string of such lines.

'O Dāśārha, O Lord — for whose sake we abandoned mother, father, brothers, husbands, sons, even sisters, all our hard-to-leave kin.'

— and so on, as scripture records.

So, for these countless gopīs, a love like that became flatly impossible to conceal.

If their supposed 'other husband' were shown in Vraja to be an illusion, then, with any possible disgust [at adultery] removed, the rasa is fully accomplished.

Otherwise — if the other-husband were real — it would be a gross tastelessness, a wreck of the rasa.

In Parīkṣit's assembly, which is all about Kṛṣṇa's majesty, the paramour-appearance was cleared away by disclosing that majesty, and the rasa-status established. In the same way, in the assembly of the King of Vraja, which is all dharmic, homely pastime, the paramour-appearance is to be cleared away by the dharmic route instead — and the rasa established there too. (Same goal, method fitted to the audience.)

So, by the lines 'he took shelter of Yogamāyā' [10.29.1] and 'they did not resent Kṛṣṇa' [10.33.37] and the like, that very Yogamāyā — whose whole display this is — is herself the one who sets it all right.

Just as, for her Lord's playful delight, Yogamāyā fashioned those various world-versions and, along the way, smoothed away any ill-will, so in that most glaring slander [of adultery] too she is understood to have set everything completely right.

For even the gopīs of the unmanifest pastime keep, unbroken, their standing as his own intimate ones.

To wit: the Brahma-saṁhitā says he [delights] 'in those gopīs, his own portions, steeped in the rasa of the blissful-conscious potency, [enjoying them] as his own selves' — which shows his husband-ship over them. And in the Gautamīya's Daśārṇa-commentary, after stating two positions — that Māyā impels them, and that his majesty does — the third position is put forward as the settled conclusion:

'Or rather he is the husband of the gopīs perfected over many lifetimes; called the son of Nanda, he is the increaser of the bliss of the three worlds.'

Having weighed all this, Rūpa himself — in passages like 'the lightness that is spoken of here' and 'since poets do not want a married woman in the principal rasa' — accepted that the paramour-and-another's-wife treatment holds only during the avatāra, and not at other times.

And this very point Kṛṣṇa himself made clear, right after the verse 'they, their minds bound in attachment to me, did not know…':

'Desiring me, [taking me for] a lover, a paramour, not knowing my true nature, the helpless women attained me — the supreme Brahman — by my company, in their hundreds of thousands.'

This is the meaning. Just as in 'Bhīṣma — noble, handsome…', or 'he makes the mat, and that Bhīṣma…', several accusatives stand in apposition, so here too all the accusatives — 'me, a lover, a paramour, the supreme Brahman' — refer to one object: '[they] attained [him,] Brahman.'

And the phrase 'him, the supreme…' is to be read the same way — all pointing to the one Kṛṣṇa.

And the order of the words here is fixed only by sense, not by grammar — just as in 'let various dishes be cooked' or 'he offers the agnihotra, [then] cooks the gruel', where it is the contextual order that carries the force.

To wit: the word 'those [women]' (tāḥ) has to be supplied from the previous verse.

'They attained Brahman' — is this the featureless absolute? No: by scriptural authority it means the Lord's personal form.

One might doubt: being the supreme auspicious support — as the Viṣṇu Purāṇa says, 'the auspicious support of the all-pervading conscious self' — could belong to any manifestation of the Lord. Anticipating this, he says 'me' (mām) — pinning it to Kṛṣṇa himself.

As was already said: 'fixing your mind on me, Kṛṣṇa' [10.47.36] and 'devotion to me leads beings [to immortality]' [10.82.44] — the 'me' throughout is Kṛṣṇa.

And to convey that they attained him in two ways — by two periods, each with its own mood — he gives two qualifications of them side by side: 'desiring me, [as] lover (ramaṇa)' and '[as] paramour (jāra), not knowing my true nature.'

The word 'ramaṇa' is conventionally fixed on the husband; 'jāra' only on the paramour. (So the two qualifications name the two relationships.)

The Viśva-prakāśa lexicon: 'ramaṇa can also mean the root of the paṭola plant; ramaṇa [primarily] means the beloved husband.'

The Amara-kośa lists 'dhava, pati, priya, bhartā' as words for husband.

And the Amara-kośa: 'jāra and upapati are the two [words for paramour].'

So 'not knowing their true nature' means: at the time of the avatāra, bewildered by my own līlā-potency, they do not recognize their eternal identity as my beloveds — and, being so bewildered, they attained me as a 'jāra', one knowable only through the paramour-notion. This is the one group.

To wit: 'mat-kāmāḥ' means those whose desire is set on me — whose longing is, 'may our notion of a husband in another man melt away like a dream, and may Kṛṣṇa himself dawn like a waking.' Being such, they attained me as their true husband (ramaṇa). This is the other group. So the verse names two: the 'jāra'-group and the 'ramaṇa'-group.

The phrase 'even knowable through the paramour-notion' comes from Śrīdhara Svāmī's commentary.

'As they approach me, so I reward them' [Gītā 4.11]: 'as' means 'exactly according to their longing' — by the principle that 'a person becomes what his resolve is' (tat-kratu-nyāya). So each group attains him in the very form they yearned for.

And he himself brought this home through an example, right after 'fixing your mind on me, Kṛṣṇa':

'The blessed ones who stayed behind in this Vraja forest the night I sported — though they never reached the rāsa dance — attained me by meditating on my prowess.'

Here, since these women had already left those husbands and even those bodies, paramour-ship is not even possible for them; and in attaining me — whether by the paramour-mode or the husband-mode — it is my compassion that is the great help. So he calls them 'abalāḥ', the helpless ones.

'Abalāḥ' means: women who have no strength at all except my help. (a-balā, 'without strength', wholly dependent on Kṛṣṇa's grace.)

Ah — never mind the story of my eternal beloveds; even others, simply by keeping their company, attained me thus, in their thousands. (Reading 'by company, in hundreds of thousands' of the verse.)

And here the matter is examined further:

Of those eternal beloveds — who, because of the descent, have forgotten their own true standing, yet inwardly, by their very nature, still bear the beauty of love for their eternal lover, Agha's conqueror; who trust him, though burdened with the pain of going to another man's house — could even their longing to choose him ever fail to bear fruit? Ah, who could doubt it?

Therefore, just as in the Lalita-mādhava, here too the whole matter comes right only through the marriage-arrangement.

Because:

'The wedded union of the fair-browed Vraja-women with Agha's conqueror — this supreme thing — brings the poem to its resolution by its very fame; and among these it is the resolution of their passionate love (rāga) as well. And that rāga is the seat of an undisturbed, mutual union; to abandon it and sport outside one's own true state would make birth itself pointless.'

'First the beloved's being unattainable; then one's efforts crushed by the elders; then, by force, the accepting of a renown of union that flouts scripture and society; then union made precious by a great, long separation — and if, at the end of all that, the couple, as Hari and his Ramā, is at last won through marriage — what joy could be greater?'

'Not coming before Kṛṣṇa — their own eternal lover — as an open lover; falling instead into another's hand, forcibly performing their own dharma; yet even there somehow attaining the desired one in secret, then torn from him; and by merit finally attaining him as husband, they made the inner bliss of all the worlds. Their innate power of love was not something built out of fear. The question, 'is this fear to be crossed or not?' — that fear was set within them only to reveal the strength of that love; and its strength shows in the way they broke the very dike of their own dharma. Her forgetting is of just that kind — as even Parīkṣit's words, seen again further on, confirm.'

'For Kṛṣṇa, Kaṁsa's fearless foe, there is no fear; and for his devotees, no [disgracing] shame either. Yet modesty does belong to him, the jewel of all virtues — how much more to those fair-browed gopīs. Now, if their shame issued from sin, it would be blameworthy; but if the gopīs' shame is only a keeping-of-concealment in their love-play, then it actually nourishes the rasa.'

'Let there be thousands of husband-devoted women — who in this envy-free hymn held to their own world and their dharma, not merely each to her own husband. But I praise the gopīs, who, openly abandoning that well-known [worldly husband] and deciding by the sheer power of conviction in their own love, took Kṛṣṇa alone as their husband.'

'Sāvitrī, Brahmā's wife; Pārvatī, Śiva's; Lakṣmī, Viṣṇu's; even Rukmiṇī, Kṛṣṇa's — all would surely delight the eyes of the world. But those gopīs, by whose radiance in the rāsa even his own wonder-working form was made to shine on every side — if he did not marry them, then let the blame rest on the Creator's own head.'

So, any worship one sees anywhere that treats the pastimes from before Kaṁsa's killing as though current — that, indeed, is [explained by the next verse]:

'Thus, with childhood games — hide-and-seek, building bridges, leaping about like monkeys, and so on — [Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma] passed their boyhood in Vraja.'

By such reasoning, it must be understood that Kṛṣṇa, as if right after the avatāra-pastime, manifests this or that of his own now-past pastimes from time to time, in response to the special devotion of particular devotees.

'O much-praised one, whatever form your devotees contemplate in their minds, that very form you take on, to grace the good.'

Indeed, worship of the childhood-pastimes is seen even among householders — at the close of the pastime that falls within the period up to Kaṁsa's killing.

But there, even for a sambhoga-pastime that he fashions by his own will, only 'accomplished' (sampanna) status is granted — not the higher 'enriched' (samṛddhimat) status [that this very verse illustrates].

But of the pastimes shown now and then in response to devotees' special devotion, a status even lower than 'accomplished' is intended — let alone anything close to the 'enriched' reunion.

Of some pastimes — those on a par with the pastimes of the manifest manifestation — an eternal existence is understood, according to the tradition of the community that worships that particular mantra. But not all manifest pastimes are eternal; for that would clash with the facts: pastimes like the plunge into Kāliya's pool are full of great suffering, some are thrown into turmoil by the burden of repeated intruders, and some are mixed with the mundane.

'Only in union can there arise that wondrous, indescribable mādana-ecstasy, by whose play the eternal pastimes shine forth in their thousands.'

For 'only in union' takes up only the joy-giving pastimes, and 'in thousands' names a limited count — so the claim that every manifest pastime is eternal is refuted.

And even granting each such pastime an eternality, since a fixity like a painting's would strip it of its very play-quality — well, let some perform that particular worship if they will; but the supreme ripening of rasa arises only in the sequential, unfolding pastime (krama-līlā).

For it is precisely here — in the sequential pastime — that we see the absorption of the ancient supreme devotees, in whom the Lord and others become manifest, and of Rūpa, the author who brought forth the Vidagdha-mādhava.

To wit:

'For the joy of the connoisseurs, Kṛṣṇa-candra, like a master cook, forever set out the sequence, brimming with course after course of rasa; and he who savors that sequence in order attains fulfillment, and in that fulfillment it is supremely fruitful here — therein lies his artistry.'

And so it is said: 'though himself beyond the material display, [he takes up] the display…' and so on.

A lone numeral (19) sitting in the commentary — an enumeration marker, with nothing to gloss.