Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.5.26
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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paśavyam
—
favorable for cattle
From paśu ('cattle'). The first word of Vasudeva's substantive inquiry is about the cows' welfare — not the family's. Gauḍīya: care for the cows is the first marker of a healthy Vaiṣṇava household. Go-pāla is glad where cows are well.
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nirujam
—
without disease
Nir + ruja ('disease'). The compound asks: is the forest free of disease for the herds? A specific, practical inquiry — Vasudeva is a kṣatriya whose questions land where they matter, not in pleasantries.
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bhūri
—
abundant
Adverb. Vraja's wellbeing is measured in abundance — bhūri ambu, bhūri tṛṇa, bhūri vīrudham. Vraja-poetry insists on plenitude, never sufficiency. The land where Kṛṣṇa lives is not minimally adequate; it is overflowing.
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bṛhat vanam
—
the great forest
Bṛhat ('great') + vana. Vṛndāvana itself is bṛhat-vana. The grammar of the question already evokes the dhāma; Vasudeva is asking after a place whose name he half-knows already as eternal.
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suhṛt-vṛtaḥ
—
surrounded by friends
Suhṛd ('well-hearted, friend') + vṛta ('surrounded'). Vraja is constituted by friend-community. Vasudeva confirms that Nanda is among suhṛds — not alone with Kṛṣṇa, but in the saṅga that is the precondition of bhakti's flowering.
For human happiness, one must care for the animals, especially the cows. Vasudeva therefore inquired whether there was a good arrangement for the animals where Nanda Mahārāja lived. For the proper pursuit of human happiness, there must be arrangements for the protection of cows. This means that there must be forests and adequate pasturing grounds full of grass and water. If the animals are happy, there will be an ample supply of milk, from which human beings will benefit by deriving many milk products with which to live happily. As enjoined in Bhagavad-gītā (18.44) , kṛṣi-go-rakṣya-vāṇijyaṁ vaiśya-karma-svabhāvajam. Without giving proper facilities to the animals, how can human society be happy? That people are raising cattle to send to the slaughterhouse is a great sin. By this demoniac enterprise, people are ruining their chance for a truly human life. Because they are not giving any importance to the instructions of Kṛṣṇa, the advancement of their so-called civilization resembles the crazy efforts of men in a lunatic asylum.
Pasavyam means beneficial for the animals. Nirujam becomes nirujam to suit the poetic meter.
Nirujam should be nīrujam (free of sickness) but is altered for meter. Are the cows healthy where you are now staying in some forest of Mathurā district? Or in the forest where you live are the cows now healthy and are the water, grass and plants sufficient? Being surrounded by friends depends on these items. This implies that the items must be spread over a wide area for prosperity.
- Refuse to buy from slaughterhouse-fed supply chains today — choose milk and ghee from a go-rakṣā or ahiṁsā-dairy source, or skip dairy until you can.
- Speak one honest sentence to a family member about why cow protection matters in Gauḍīya life, without lecturing — frame it as karuṇā for the soul in that body.
- Notice when you treat 'animal welfare' as sentimentality and re-anchor it in Kṛṣṇa's instruction: kṛṣi-go-rakṣya is vaiśya-dharma, not optional charity.
A traveler asks the rancher first about the pasture, the water, the grass — because the cows' welfare is the rancher's welfare. Vasudeva asks about the forest before he asks about his sons, because in Vraja the welfare of the gomaṇḍala is inseparable from the welfare of the child being raised there.
My note
Source: vedabase.io