Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 9.10.15

kāmaḿ prayāhi jahi viśravaso 'vamehaḿ

trailokya-rāvaṇam avāpnuhi vīra patnīm

badhnīhi setum iha te yaśaso vitatyai

gāyanti dig-vijayino yam upetya bhūpāḥ

SYNONYMS

kāmam — as You like; prayāhi — You may go over my water; jahi — just conquer; viśravasaḥ — of Viśravā Muni; avameham — pollution, like urine; trailokya — for the three worlds; rāvaṇam — the person known as Rāvaṇa, the cause of weeping; avāpnuhi — regain; vīra — O great hero; patnīm — Your wife; badhnīhi — just construct; setum — a bridge; iha — here (on this water); te — of Your good self; yaśasaḥ — fame; vitatyai — to expand; gāyanti — will glorify; dik-vijayinaḥ — great heroes who have conquered all directions; yam — which (bridge); upetya — coming near; bhūpāḥ — great kings.

TRANSLATION

My Lord, You may use my water as You like. Indeed, You may cross it and go to the abode of Rāvaṇa, who is the great source of disturbance and crying for the three worlds. He is the son of Viśravā, but is condemned like urine. Please go kill him and thus regain Your wife, Sītādevī. O great hero, although my water presents no impediment to Your going to Lańkā, please construct a bridge over it to spread Your transcendental fame. Upon seeing this wonderfully uncommon deed of Your Lordship, all the great heroes and kings in the future will glorify You.

PURPORT

It is said that a son and urine emanate from the same source — the genitals. When a son is a devotee or a great learned person, the seminal discharge for begetting a son is successful, but if the son is unqualified and brings no glory to his family, he is no better than urine. Here Rāvaṇa is compared to urine because he was a cause of disturbances to the three worlds. Thus the ocean personified wanted him killed by Lord Rāmacandra.

One feature of the Supreme Personality of Godhead Lord Rāmacandra is omnipotence. The Lord can act without regard to material impediments or inconveniences, but to prove that He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead and was not merely advertised as Godhead or elected by popular vote, He constructed a wonderful bridge over the ocean. Nowadays it has become fashionable to create some artificial God who performs no uncommon activities; a little magic will bewilder a foolish person into selecting an artificial God because he does not understand how powerful God is. Lord Rāmacandra, however, constructed a bridge over the water with stone by making the stone float. This is proof of God's uncommonly wonderful power. Why should someone be accepted as God without displaying extraordinary potency by doing something never to be done by any common man? We accept Lord Rāmacandra as the Supreme Personality of Godhead because He constructed this bridge, and we accept Lord Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead because He lifted Govardhana Hill when He was only seven years old. We should not accept any rascal as God or an incarnation of God, for God displays special features in His various activities. Therefore, the Lord Himself says in Bhagavad-gītā (4.9):

janma karma ca me divyam

evaḿ yo vetti tattvataḥ

tyaktvā dehaḿ punar janma

naiti mām eti so 'rjuna

"One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna." The activities of the Lord are not common; they are all transcendentally wonderful and not able to be performed by any other living being. The symptoms of the Lord's activities are all mentioned in the śāstras, and after one understands them one can accept the Lord as He is.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness