Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.57.32
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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avarṣati
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when (Indra) was not supplying rain
Present participle of √vṛṣ with privative a-. Drought as a localized phenomenon, traced to Indra's withholding. Gauḍīyas: in the Bhāgavata's cosmology, rain is a deva-mediated gift; it can be paused for instruction.
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kāśī - īśaḥ
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the king of Kāśī
Compound: kāśī (Vārāṇasī) + īśa (lord). Kāśī, the ancient city of light. The king's recognition that a bhakta's arrival is the remedy for drought encodes the Bhāgavata's theology of saint-as-rain.
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śvaphalkāya
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to Śvaphalka
Akrūra's father. Gauḍīyas treat Śvaphalka as the Bhāgavata's example of inherited bhakti — Akrūra's tenderness has a lineage; the chariot to Vraja in chapter 38 carried generations.
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gāndinīm
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Gāndinī (his daughter)
Gāndinī, Akrūra's mother. The verse-pair is genealogical: Akrūra is the son of Śvaphalka and Gāndinī, and so the same vṛṣṭi-prabhāva attaches to him.
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tataḥ avarṣat
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then it rained
Adverb + imperfect of √vṛṣ. The crisp Bhāgavata cause-and-effect: bhakta arrives, rain falls. Gauḍīyas: this is not magic but the structural logic of a cosmos in which Bhagavān honors His own.
Śvaphalka was Akrūra’s father, and the citizens felt that the son must have the same power as the father. Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī points out that because of Akrūra’s relationship with his maternal grandfather, the King of Kāśī, in a time of difficulty Akrūra went to that city.
Then Indra (deva) did not give rain in Kasi, the king gave his daughter to Akrura’s father in marriage. Then rain came. Akrura went to Kasi because it was the city of his maternal grandfather.
Two verses describe what people said. The king of Kāsī gave his excellent daughter along with ornaments and other goods to Akrūra’s father, Śvaphalka. The king brought Śvaphalka to Kāsī to marry his daughter. That daughter was famous for coming out the womb after a long time on the condition that she could perform a daily donation of a cow. Akrūra went to Kāsī since it was the home of his maternal grandfather.
- Where does honoring of a particular guest open weather you can't otherwise affect?
- How does lineage of devotional households matter in your tradition?
An old story is unrolled to explain the drought: Śvaphalka, Akrūra's father, brought rain to Kāśī simply by arriving there. Gauḍīyas read these inset stories as the Bhāgavata's way of building the case for the saint as a meteorological reality — bhaktas are not symbols of mercy; their bodies are conduits of it.
When Indra had withheld rain from the kingdom of Kāśī (Vārāṇasī), the king investigated and was told that Śvaphalka, a Yādava of great spiritual standing, would have to be received there. The king brought him in and gave his daughter Gāndinī in marriage to him; the rains broke immediately (SB 9.24.15 and parallel Purāṇic accounts).
Gauḍīyas hold the episode as canonical proof that the body of a bhakta carries vṛṣṭi-prabhāva — the power that compels rain. The elders of Dvārakā cite the precedent here to explain (mistakenly, in part) the omens of Akrūra's absence.
My note
Source: vedabase.io