Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.76.27
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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dāruka-ātmajaḥ
—
the son of Dāruka
Contiguous join (dāruka + ātmajaḥ) from synonyms. Ātmaja — 'born from the self/soul' — son. Dāruka is Kṛṣṇa's sūta; his ātmaja inherits the sūta-dharma. Family is, in Bhāgavata logic, prior training for sevā.
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dharma-vit
—
the expert knower of religious duty
Contiguous join (dharma + vit). The Bhāgavatam names him dharma-vit even while his action will be questioned by Pradyumna — to teach that two dharma-vits can disagree on a single situation; the higher dharma is decided by Bhagavān's mood.
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apovāha
—
removed
Perfect of apa + ud + √vah. Vah is the root that gives vāhana (carrier) and vivāha (marriage — leading-away). The driver's act of carrying his master away is grammatically a kind of vivāha — a removal-to-safety.
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arim-damam
—
the subduer of enemies
Contiguous join (arim + damam). A standard epic epithet. The Bhāgavatam preserves it here for the moment of irony: the arim-dama is being apovāha-ed from the battlefield, the subduer is briefly carried.
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vakṣaḥ-sthalam
—
whose chest
Contiguous join (vakṣaḥ + sthalam). The vakṣaḥ-sthala of Bhagavān is Lakṣmī's seat (Brahma-saṁhitā 5.27). Pradyumna's chest is Lakṣmī-line tissue; the driver's panic at its 'shattering' is the panic of a man who feared he had lost Lakṣmī's own son.
Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī explains that actually Lord Pradyumna has a sac-cid-ānanda body, an eternal, spiritual form that can never be wounded by mundane weapons. Dāruka’s son, however, was a great devotee of the Lord, and out of intense love he feared for the safety of his master and thus removed Him from the battlefield. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes: “The name of Śālva’s commander-in-chief was Dyumān. He was very powerful, and although bitten by twenty-five of Pradyumna’s arrows, he suddenly attacked Pradyumna with his fierce club and struck Him so strongly that Pradyumna became unconscious. Immediately there was a roaring, ‘Now He is dead! Now He is dead!’ The force of the club on Pradyumna’s chest was very severe, enough to tear asunder the chest of an ordinary man.”
Actually the spiritual chest of Pradumnya cannot be pierced by the material club of Dyuman . However the lila sakti quickly arranged all of this in order to increase his taste for energetic fighting. His driver, thinking that he had actually been pierced in the chest, took him from the battle field somewhere else. He did this because he was knowledgeable of the proper action: the scriptures say that the charioteer should protect the warrior in danger. However by the rules of sandhi the charioteer can also be described as adharma vit, not knowing the truth, since he was not aware that Pradumnya had a body which was sac cid ananda. But his ignorance in this matter is also very suitable, for he was the son of Daruka. The Bhakti Rasamrta Sindhu says that Parikit, Daruka and Uddhava had raga bhakti for the Lord. The son of Daruka, who had such great prema, therefore had very great affection for Pradyumna, and therefore took him from the field.
He removed him from the field though his chest was not shattered (asīrna-vakṣaḥ-sthalam) so that he could again defeat his enemy after resting a moment (arindamam). “But was removing him proper?” He knew the dharma of protecting the warrior on the chariot since he was the son of Dāruka.
- When have I been 'rescued' by someone's love against my own intention?
- How do I honor both the love and the wish to stay in the fight?
Like a faithful steward who, seeing his master collapse, carries him from the courtyard back into the house even before the master can object, the son of Dāruka removes Pradyumna from the field. Bhakti-driven service sometimes mistakes the master's strength for his peril — but the heart is right.
Dāruka serves Kṛṣṇa across the Dvārakā-līlās — driving His chariot at Kurukṣetra alongside Arjuna's, and in SB 11.30 receiving Kṛṣṇa's last instructions before His disappearance. The lineage of Kṛṣṇa-sūtas is a lineage of trust.
Dāruka-ātmaja, the son of Dāruka, has inherited his father's dharma — and, narratively, his father's reflex of protecting his master's body. The son's mistake here is the father's faith in another form.
My note
Source: vedabase.io