Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.42.14
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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smara
—
Cupid, kāma-deva
From √smṛ — to remember (Cupid is so called because he 'reminds' of pleasure). Gauḍīya distinction: smara/kāma in Mathurā's women is mundane; in the gopīs the same surface is kṛṣṇa-kāma (pure devotional desire). Same word, different ontology.
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kṣobhāt
—
by their agitation
Ablative of kṣobha — disturbance, churning. The Bhāgavata names what happens precisely: not love, but agitation. Gauḍīya note: agitation by Kṛṣṇa's form, even unrefined, is preferable to dull indifference; it is raw material rasa can refine.
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visrasta
—
disheveled
Past participle of vi + √sras — to fall away. Clothes, hair, ornaments fall loose. Gauḍīya commentary: outward decorum dissolves before Kṛṣṇa — what the world calls disorder is, when oriented to Him, the body's spontaneous praṇāma.
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lekhya-mūrtayaḥ
—
their forms as if drawn in a picture
Compound: lekhya (to be drawn) + mūrti (form). They become still as paintings. Bhāgavata's poetic touch — stillness is also a kind of bhāva (stambha, paralysis), one of the eight sāttvika-bhāvas Rūpa Gosvāmī catalogues.
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na avidan
—
they could not recognize (themselves)
Imperfect of √vid with negation. Loss of self-awareness. Gauḍīya: this is the seed-form of the gopīs' ātma-vismṛti (self-forgetting in Kṛṣṇa) — but here without the rasa-architecture to sustain it.
Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī states that since the women of Mathurā immediately experienced symptoms of conjugal attraction when they saw Kṛṣṇa, they were the most advanced devotees in the city. The ten effects of Cupid are described as follows: cakṣū-rāgaḥ prathamaṁ cittāsaṅgas tato ’tha saṅkalpaḥ nidrā-cchedas tanutā viṣaya-nivṛttis trapā-nasaḥ / unmādo mūrcchā mṛtir ity etāḥ smara-daśā daśaiva syuḥ. “First comes attraction expressed through the eyes, then intense attachment in the mind, then determination, loss of sleep, becoming emaciated, disinterest in external things, shamelessness, madness, becoming stunned and death. These are the ten stages of Cupid’s effects.” Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī also points out that devotees who possess pure love of Godhead generally do not exhibit the symptom of death, since this is inauspicious in relation to Kṛṣṇa. They do, however, manifest the other nine symptoms, culminating in becoming stunned in ecstasy.
The wives of the merchants were the best of devotees. There are ten stages of kama: attraction by sight, attraction by the heart, determination, sleeplessness, wasting away, loss of interest in other objects, absence of shame, madness, loss of consciousness and death. Though these symptoms manifest in stages, at this time they manifested all at once by seeing Krsna. "Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing?" they were unable to properly understand this. In this way they manifested symptoms of loss of shame. Because of the impulse of kama they became thin, and thus the bangles and clothing fell from their bodies (wasting away). Loosening of their hair was due to rolling on the ground, trembling and stretching the limbs, which are all signs of madness (unmada). Standing like painted pictures indicates the ninth state of loss of consciousness. Because the tenth state, death is inauspicious, it does not usually manifest in those expressing prema.
The women of the merchant class on the merchants’ streets developed love because of their natural soft natures. Because of fainting or loss of control (kṣobha), a symptom of prema, simply by remembering seeing Kṛṣṇa, they forgot their bodies. They were not able to understand where they were at that moment. Their clothing and other times became completely loose. Their clothing and bracelets became loose because their bodies suddenly became thin from the agitation of love. Their hair became loose because their bodies quivered and stretched. They became like painted figures.
- Where do you assume devotees can only be made in temples?
- What 'ordinary woman in the city' could be a more advanced devotee than you guess?
Painters caught mid-stroke when the model arrives and turns out to be the Sun itself — their hands fall, their brushes hover, their work suspended. Mathurā's women are not seduced; they are stopped. Beauty that is Bhagavān is also a kind of arrest.
My note
Source: vedabase.io