• nandaḥ — Nanda Mahārāja
  Nanda — Kṛṣṇa's foster-father in Vraja. Gauḍīyas hold Nanda as the personification of vātsalya-rasa in its paternal aspect (paired with Yaśodā). His first words to a Yadu-clan visitor are a father's worry about the wider family.
• niranugrahe — the merciless
  Compound: nir (without) + anugraha (mercy, grace). The same anugraha Akrūra used of Kaṁsa in v.7 (as devotional irony) Nanda now negates plainly. Gauḍīyas read this as the unironic verdict on Kaṁsa — the political reality Akrūra had to dress in bhakti's clothing.
• kaṁse — while Kaṁsa is alive
  Locative of Kaṁsa. The Mathurā tyrant. Nanda's word-order places kaṁse jīvati in a single phrase — "with Kaṁsa alive" — a quietly devastating compression. Survival under such a king is itself a calamity.
• dāśārha — O descendant of Daśārha
  Vocative — Akrūra's clan-name as a descendant of Daśārha (a Yādava ancestor). Gauḍīyas note Nanda's careful address: he speaks to Akrūra as a kinsman of the imperiled Yadus, framing the conversation as family rather than emissary-business.
• sauna — an animal slaughterer
  From sūnā — slaughterhouse. The butcher of animals. Gauḍīyas read this image as a deliberate inversion of dharma: the king ought to protect his subjects as a cowherd tends cows; Kaṁsa tends them as a butcher does sheep.
• avayaḥ — sheep
  Domesticated, defenseless animals. The metaphor depicts the Yadus under Kaṁsa as victims-in-waiting. Gauḍīyas use this verse to teach about adharmic kingship: where the rāja is asura, the prajā are not citizens but cattle in line.

• Where do you spiritualize away questions about real political danger to those you love?
• How do you hold devotion and concern for the world in the same conversation?

A villager seeing a relative from the city does not ask after the weather first — he asks how the family is surviving the tyrant. Nanda Mahārāja's first question is not about Mathurā's politics or markets; it is about whether the Yadus are still alive at all. The sheep-and-butcher image places Kaṁsa exactly: not a king, an abattoir.