Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.1.1

śrī-rājovāca

kathito vamśa-vistāro

bhavatā soma-sūryayoh

rājñām cobhaya-vamśyānām

caritam paramādbhutam

SYNONYMS

śrī-rājā uvāca — King Parīkshit said; kathitah — has already been described; vamśa-vistārah — a broad description of the dynasties; bhavatā — by Your Lordship; soma-sūryayoh — of the moon-god and the sun-god; rājñām — of the kings; ca — and; ubhaya — both; vamśyānām — of the members of the dynasties; caritam — the character; parama — exalted; adbhutam — and wonderful.

TRANSLATION

King Parīkshit said: My dear lord, you have elaborately described the dynasties of both the moon-god and the sun-god, with the exalted and wonderful character of their kings.

PURPORT

At the end of the Ninth Canto, Twenty-fourth Chapter, Śukadeva Gosvāmī summarized the activities of Krishna. He spoke of how Krishna had personally appeared to reduce the burden on the earth, how He had manifested His pastimes as a householder, and how, soon after His birth, He had transferred Himself to His Vrajabhūmi-līlā. Parīkshit Mahārāja, being naturally a devotee of Krishna, wanted to hear more about Lord Krishna. Therefore, to encourage Śukadeva Gosvāmī to continue speaking about Krishna and give further details, he thanked Śukadeva Gosvāmī for having described the activities of Krishna in brief. Śukadeva Gosvāmī had said:

jāto gatah pitri-grihād vrajam edhitārtho

hatvā ripūn suta-śatāni kritorudārah

utpādya teshu purushah kratubhih samīje

ātmānam ātma-nigamam prathayañ janeshu

"The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Krishna, known as līlā-purushottama, appeared as the son of Vasudeva but immediately left His father's home and went to Vrindāvana to expand His loving relationships with His confidential devotees. In Vrindāvana the Lord killed many demons, and afterward He returned to Dvārakā, where according to Vedic principles He married many wives who were the best of women, begot through them hundreds of sons, and performed sacrifices for His own worship to establish the principles of householder life." (Bhāg. 9.24.66)

The Yadu dynasty belonged to the family descending from Soma, the moon-god. Although the planetary systems are so arranged that the sun comes first, before the moon, Parīkshit Mahārāja gave more respect to the dynasty of the moon-god, the soma-vamśa, because in the Yādava dynasty, descending from the moon, Krishna had appeared. There are two different kshatriya families of the royal order, one descending from the king of the moon planet and the other descending from the king of the sun. Whenever the Supreme Personality of Godhead appears, He generally appears in a kshatriya family because He comes to establish religious principles and the life of righteousness. According to the Vedic system, the kshatriya family is the protector of the human race. When the Supreme Personality of Godhead appeared as Lord Rāmacandra, He appeared in the sūrya-vamśa, the family descending from the sun-god, and when He appeared as Lord Krishna, He did so in the Yadu dynasty, or yadu-vamśa, whose descent was from the moon-god. In the Ninth Canto, Twenty-fourth Chapter, of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, there is a long list of the kings of the yadu-vamśa. All the kings in both the soma-vamśa and sūrya-vamśa were great and powerful, and Mahārāja Parīkshit praised them very highly (rājñām cobhaya-vamśyānām caritam paramādbhutam). Nonetheless, he wanted to hear more about the soma-vamśa because that was the dynasty in which Krishna had appeared.

The supreme abode of the Personality of Godhead, Krishna, is described in Brahma-samhitā as the abode of cintāmani: cintāmani-prakara-sadmasu kalpa-vriksha-lakshāvriteshu surabhīr abhipālayantam [Bs. 5.29]. The Vrindāvana-dhāma on this earth is a replica of that same abode. As stated in Bhagavad-gītā (8.20), in the spiritual sky there is another, eternal nature, transcendental to manifested and unmanifested matter. The manifested world can be seen in the form of many stars and planets such as the sun and moon, but beyond this is the unmanifested, which is imperceptible to those who are embodied. And beyond this unmanifested matter is the spiritual kingdom, which is described in Bhagavad-gītā as supreme and eternal. That kingdom is never annihilated. Although material nature is subject to repeated creation and annihilation, that spiritual nature remains as it is eternally. In the Tenth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, that spiritual nature, the spiritual world, is described as Vrindāvana, Goloka Vrindāvana or Vraja-dhāma. The elaborate description of the above-mentioned śloka from the Ninth Canto — jāto gatah pitri-grihād — will be found here, in the Tenth Canto.

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