Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.24.14
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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īśvaraḥ
—
a controller
From √īś. Kṛṣṇa concedes the karma-mīmāṁsā term provisionally: 'even if there is some such controller.' He is arguing inside the opponent's vocabulary. Gauḍīya frame: the real īśvara is paramaḥ īśvaraḥ, Kṛṣṇa Himself; intermediate īśvaras are derivative.
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phala - rūpī
—
shaping the fruits
Compound: phala (fruit) + rūpī (formed). 'The one who gives shape to results.' Kṛṣṇa grants this office to the opponent and then deflates it: a fruit-shaper depends on a fruit-grower.
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kartāram
—
the doer
Accusative of kartṛ. The center of karma-mīmāṁsā ontology. Kṛṣṇa's logical pivot: every phala-rūpī presupposes a kartṛ. No kartṛ, no phala — therefore the kartṛ's karma is the load-bearing element, not the distributor's grace.
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akartuḥ
—
of a non-doer
Genitive of a-kartṛ. The pointed counter-case: over one who has not acted, the phala-distributor has no jurisdiction. The argument quietly compresses to: even by your premises, action is sovereign — so why credit Indra?
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prabhuḥ
—
lord, master
From pra + √bhū. Kṛṣṇa concedes the title only with a restriction: the prabhuḥ of fruits is prabhuḥ only over performed actions. Gauḍīya hearers smile — the unrestricted prabhuḥ is Kṛṣṇa, who is even prabhuḥ over those who have not acted.
Here Lord Kṛṣṇa argues that if there is a supreme controller, He must depend on a performer of activity to reciprocate with and must therefore also be subject to the laws of karma, being obliged to award happiness and distress to conditioned souls according to the laws of good and evil. This superficial argument neglects the obvious point that the laws of nature that prescribe the good and bad results of pious and impious acts are themselves creations of the all-good Supreme Lord. Being the creator and sustainer of these laws, the Lord is not subject to them. Furthermore, the Lord is not dependent on the work of the conditioned souls, since He is satisfied and complete within Himself. Out of His all-merciful nature He awards the results appropriate to our activities. That which we call destiny, fate or karma is an elaborate and subtle system of rewards and punishments meant for gradually encouraging conditioned souls to evolve to the stage of perfect consciousness, which is their original, constitutional nature. The Supreme Personality of Godhead has so dexterously formulated and applied the laws of material nature governing punishment and reward for human behavior that the living being is discouraged from sin and encouraged toward goodness without suffering any significant interference with his free will as an eternal soul. In contrast to the material nature, the Lord exhibits His essential nature in the spiritual world, where He reciprocates the eternal love of His pure devotees. Such loving affairs are based completely on the mutual freedom of the Lord and His devotees, not on a mechanical reciprocation of coinciding selfish interests. The Supreme Lord, assisted by His pure devotees, repeatedly offers the conditioned souls of this world the opportunity to give up their bizarre attempt at exploiting the material universe and go back home, back to Godhead, for an eternal life of bliss and knowledge. Considering all these points, the atheistic arguments given here by Lord Kṛṣṇa in a playful mood are not to be taken seriously.
But how can inanimate karma alone give results? There must be a dispenser of the results of action, a lord. This verse answers this objection. If such a lord exists, he must give results to those who perform actions. Then he makes his logic stronger by negation. That lord cannot give results to a person who does not do action.
If a Lord who gives results (phala-rūpī) exists, he follows after the performer of action since he gives results according to the performer’s actions. This is emphasized by stating it in the opposite way. This is because (hi) it is not possible to give results without the performer.
A clerk hands out year-end bonuses, but only to employees whose ledgers show work — he cannot, by any authority of his office, hand a bonus to someone who never came to the desk. Even granting that there is such a clerk above us, Kṛṣṇa argues, his power begins only after we have done the work; the work itself is therefore the real seat of action.
My note
Source: vedabase.io