Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 11.5.24
త్రేతాయాం రక్తవర్ణోఽసౌ చతుర్బాహుస్త్రిమేఖల: ।
హిరణ్యకేశస్త్రయ్యాత్మా స్రుక్స్రువాద్యుపలక్షణ: ॥ ౨౪ ॥
tretāyāṁ rakta-varṇo ’sau
[tretaayaam rakta-varno ’sau]
catur-bāhus tri-mekhalaḥ
[chatur-baahus tri-mekhalah]
hiraṇya-keśas trayy-ātmā
[hiranya-keshas trayy-aatmaa]
sruk-sruvādy-upalakṣaṇaḥ
[sruk-sruvaady-upalakshanah]
Word-for-word
tretāyām
—
in Tretā-yuga
rakta-varṇaḥ
—
red-complexioned
asau
—
He
catuḥ-bāhuḥ
—
four-armed
tri-mekhalaḥ
—
wearing three belts (representing three phases of Vedic initiation)
hiraṇya-keśaḥ
—
having golden hair
trayi-ātmā
—
personifying the knowledge of the three Vedas
sruk-sruva-ādi
—
the sacrificial wooden ladle, spoon and so on
upalakṣaṇaḥ
—
having as His symbols.
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
tretāyāṁ rakta-varṇo ’sau
tretāyām
in Tretā-yuga
rakta-varṇaḥ
red-complexioned
catur-bāhus tri-mekhalaḥ
hiraṇya-keśas trayy-ātmā
asau
He
catuḥ-bāhuḥ
four-armed
tri-mekhalaḥ
wearing three belts (representing three phases of Vedic initiation)
hiraṇya-keśaḥ
having golden hair
trayi-ātmā
personifying the knowledge of the three Vedas
sruk-sruvādy-upalakṣaṇaḥ
sruk-sruva-ādi
the sacrificial wooden ladle, spoon and so on
upalakṣaṇaḥ
having as His symbols.
In Tretā-yuga the Lord appears with a red complexion. He has four arms, golden hair, and wears a triple belt representing initiation into each of the three Vedas. Embodying the knowledge of worship by sacrificial performance, which is contained in the Ṛg, Sāma and Yajur Vedas, His symbols are the ladle, spoon and other implements of sacrifice.
Purport
The sruk is a particular implement for pouring ghee in sacrifices. It is about an arm’s length long and is made of a particular type of wood called vikaṅkata. The sruk has a rodlike handle and a spout with a shallow groove at its tip that resembles a swan’s beak. Its front part is a carved-out spoon the size of a fist. The sruva is another implement used in sacrificial oblations. It is made of khadira wood, is smaller than the sruk and is used to pour ghee into the sruk. It is also sometimes used instead of the sruk to pour ghee directly into the sacrificial fire. These are the Lord’s symbols in Tretā-yuga, when the Lord incarnates to introduce the yuga-dharma of yajṣa, or sacrifice.
— A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
Gauḍīya Ācāryas
Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura
Gauḍīya
Translation
In Tretā-yuga the Lord appears with a red complexion. He has four arms, golden hair, and wears a triple belt representing initiation into each of the three Vedas. Embodying the knowledge of worship by sacrificial performance, which is contained in the Ṛg, Sāma and Yajur Vedas, his symbols are the ladle, spoon and other implements of sacrifice.
He is red in color and his name is Rakta. He wears a three stranded belt obtained during the initiation ceremony. He is the form of sacrifice, because he possesses the three Vedas. Sacrifice is the method of worship in this age.
Related lectures
Personal Guidance
In Tretā-yuga the red-complexioned, four-armed Lord embodies sacrifice itself — the yuga-dharma is yajña, offering one's work as oblation to Kṛṣṇa.
Practical Applications
- Before starting your most important task today, mentally offer it as an oblation to Kṛṣṇa — let the work itself be the ghee, the effort the fire.
- Notice one moment of consumption today (eating, buying, scrolling) and pause to reverse it — make at least one act today an offering rather than a taking.
- Refuse the assumption that worship belongs only inside a temple — treat one ordinary action (cooking, emailing, driving) as a deliberate yajña.
Reflection Questions
- If the Lord in Tretā-yuga is identified with the very implements of sacrifice, what implements of my daily life have I never thought to consecrate?
- Where in my life am I receiving without offering, and what would it cost me to begin reversing that flow today?
For Each Age Group
youth
- Before your next exam or assignment, take ten seconds to offer the effort — not the grade — to Kṛṣṇa, and notice how it changes the anxiety in your chest.
- Pick one thing you usually consume passively (a feed, a show, a snack) and replace it once this week with something you give — time, attention, a message to someone struggling.
- Refuse the campus story that ambition and devotion are opposites — treat your studies themselves as the ladle by which you pour effort into the fire of your future service.
householder
- Before leaving for work, briefly offer the day's labour and its income to Kṛṣṇa, so that earning becomes yajña and not merely accumulation.
- Cook or serve one meal today with the explicit inner mood that it is an offering — to the deity, to guests, to your family as parts of Kṛṣṇa — and watch how it reorders the kitchen.
- Notice where family decisions are driven purely by comfort or status, and reframe at least one such decision (a purchase, a schedule, a conversation) as an offering rather than a consumption.
senior
- Treat this stage of life as the final, most deliberate yajña — choose one possession, role, or grievance each week to consciously offer up rather than cling to.
- Mentor a younger person not by giving advice but by showing them, through your own example, what it looks like to live as an offering rather than as an acquirer.
- When the body's diminishments arise — fatigue, pain, dependence — receive them as the ghee being poured into the fire, and let the inner mood be "this too is offered," not "this is being taken from me."
Common Pitfalls
- Treating yajña as a relic of a past age and concluding the verse has nothing to ask of you now, instead of seeing offering as the underlying spirit of every age.
- Reducing sacrifice to external ritual and missing that the inner mood of offering to Kṛṣṇa personally is what makes any act a yajña.
- Admiring the Lord's symbols aesthetically — the ladle, the golden hair, the triple belt — without letting the call to live a life of offering actually disturb your habits.
Discussion Prompts
- Share one area of your life where you instinctively resist the language of "sacrifice" — what is being protected, and is that protection serving the soul or the body?
- If our age is supposedly one of saṅkīrtana rather than yajña, why does Vyāsa still describe the Tretā form in such detail — what is he asking us to carry forward?
- Compare an offering you have made that felt alive with one that felt mechanical — what was actually different inside you, not outside?
Role Play
A student tells you they have started chanting daily but feel their nine-to-five job is "just material work" that has nothing to do with bhakti — using this verse's vision of the Lord as the very embodiment of sacrificial offering, walk them through how their work itself can be reframed as yajña, without letting them off the hook for the inner mood that makes it so.
Objections & Responses
- This is just mythology — a red-skinned four-armed deity holding ritual implements has nothing to say to a modern person living in a city.
The form is a teaching, not a costume. Vyāsa is showing that in each age the Lord meets people through the dominant medium of religious life — in Tretā, sacrificial offering. The implements are pointing at a principle that outlives the ritual: a life is either consuming or offering, and the Lord is personally present in the offering. - We are in Kali-yuga and the yuga-dharma now is chanting Kṛṣṇa's names, so why dwell on a Tretā-yuga form at all?
Precisely because the spirit of yajña is not abandoned in Kali — it is concentrated into saṅkīrtana. Seeing the Lord as the embodiment of sacrifice in Tretā helps us understand that when we chant, we are not doing something easier than yajña; we are doing the same offering, in the form suited to our age.
My note
Source: vedabase.io