Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.29.5
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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duhantyaḥ
—
those who were milking
Present participle of √duh, feminine plural. Milking is the most representative Vraja-task. The verb anchors the rāsa in the ordinary economy of cows and curd — the rāsa-līlā erupts not in a temple but in the dairy.
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samutsukāḥ
—
very eager
Sam + ut + suka — completely lifted-up-eager. Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu names utkaṇṭhā / utsukatā (eager longing) as a vyabhicāri-bhāva of mādhurya; the verse names the bhāva in passing as if it were household furniture.
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hitvā
—
abandoning
Absolutive of √hā (to leave). The same hitvā that occurs in BG 2.3 (klaibyam mā sma gamaḥ pārtha) — abandonment as decisive act. Here what is abandoned is not weakness but the legitimate work of the home. Bhakti can require even that.
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saṁyāvam
—
wheat cake / fried preparation
A specific Vraja food — saṁyāva is the cake left to burn. The Bhāgavatam-poet's realism: not 'duties' in the abstract but this cake, this pot. Gauḍīya devotional literature delights in such precise domestic detail.
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adhiśritya
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having placed (on the stove)
Absolutive of adhi-√śri — to set above, to place over the fire. The action half-done is what makes the going dramatic. The unfinished pose is the verse's signature: bhakti interrupts.
The eagerness of these cowherd girls, so lovingly devoted to young Kṛṣṇa, is shown here.
Three verses describe the gopis’ complete absence of attachment to their duties in their haste to meet Krsna. Some gave up their normal duties. They were made to milk the cows, but they gave up milking the cows in order to meet Krsna. Some gopis left the pots of milk boiling on the stoves in order to meet Krsna and others left wheat cakes cooking in the oven.
Three verses describe how they went to him giving up duties and local custom with disinterest in their bodies because of the agitation caused by the most attractive song, since they were eager to go there with strong determination. First giving up their designated duties is described. They were milking cows but gave up milking or the milk, and went towards the song of the flute. Some when in large groups and others went with only two or three friends, since verse 44 describes that there were hundreds of group leaders. They left because they went most eager, unable to bear delay in time. This reason for going should be given for the following verses also. Others left while boiling milking and others left while cakes were on the fire. “Others (aparāḥ)” should be understood in all the verses. Or they left the milking boiling on the stove without taking it off, and they left cakes on the stove without removing them.
- Which task would I leave unfinished today if I trusted I'd heard His flute?
- Where am I letting 'finishing the work' override the call?
Milk left to curdle, cakes left to burn — the kitchen does not finish what the flute has interrupted. Bhakti, once awakened by Kṛṣṇa's call, is intolerant of unfinished business; it walks out of the half-completed life.
Mahārāja Bharata, having grown attached to a fawn, was reborn as a deer to finish that thought — Bhāgavatam 5.7–14. The gopīs are the opposite case: they leave the milk-pot mid-pour because their bhāva for Kṛṣṇa is so unmixed that no household attachment can catch them.
Gauḍīyas use Bharata's story as the negative space against which the gopīs' kitchen-abandonment shines: where Bharata's mind followed the deer, the gopīs' minds had already followed the flute.
My note
Source: vedabase.io