• citraiḥ vacobhiḥ — with wonderful words
  Contiguous (citraiḥ + vacobhiḥ). Citra = wonderful, variegated. Hari's speech has been many-colored — flattery, history, doubt, dharma — and the asura has been hooked at each color. Gauḍīyas read citra-vāk as Bhagavān's craftsmanship in conversation.
• su-peśalaiḥ — very clever, very smooth
  Contiguous (su + peśalaiḥ). Peśala = polished, beautiful, dexterous. The Bhāgavatam calls Hari's diction beautiful even as it dismantles an asura — beauty and surgery in one breath.
• bhinna-dhīḥ — his intelligence shattered
  Contiguous (bhinna + dhīḥ). Bhinna = broken. The buddhi that asked Nārada for the easy-lord (v.14) is now broken into pieces. Gauḍīya reading: the asura's dhī, which served his asurya so well, is the very faculty Bhagavān undoes.
• vismṛtaḥ — having forgotten
  Past participle of vi-√smṛ. Forgetting his own boon, his own intent, his own death-trigger. Smaraṇa is bhakti's pillar; vismaraṇa here is asurya's collapse — the inverse symmetry the chapter loves.
• ku-matiḥ — fool, of perverse intelligence
  Contiguous (ku + matiḥ). Ku = bad, perverse. The same ku-mati who started asking the wrong question of Nārada ends here placing his own hand. Character is fate, in scriptural prose.

A man under hypnosis lifts his own hand to his head and does not register that he is the one lifting it. Vṛka, bewildered by the nectar-rain of Hari's clever words, places his own hand on his own crown without remembering why he came. The Lord did not touch him; the asura's choice did the work.