Text 23
tasmāt parokṣe ’smad-upaśrutāny alaṁ
kariṣyatha stotram apīcya-vācaḥ
saty uttamaśloka-guṇānuvāde
jugupsitaṁ na stavayanti sabhyāḥ
tasmāt — therefore; parokṣe — in some future time; asmat — my; upaśrutāni — about the qualities spoken of; alam — sufficiently; kariṣyatha — you will be able to offer; stotram — prayers; apīcya-vācaḥ — O gentle reciters; sati — being the proper engagement; uttama-śloka — of the Supreme Personality of Godhead; guṇa — of the qualities; anuvāde — discussion; jugupsitam — to an abominable person; na — never; stavayanti — offer prayers; sabhyāḥ — persons who are gentle.
O gentle reciters, offer such prayers in due course of time, when the qualities of which you have spoken actually manifest themselves in me. The gentle who offer prayers to the Supreme Personality of Godhead do not attribute such qualities to a human being, who does not actually have them.
Gentle devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead know perfectly well who is God and who is not. Nondevotee impersonalists, however, who have no idea what God is and who never offer prayers to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, are always interested in accepting a human being as God and offering such prayers to him. This is the difference between a devotee and a demon. Demons manufacture their own gods, or a demon himself claims to be God, following in the footsteps of Rāvaṇa and Hiraṇyakaśipu. Although Pṛthu Mahārāja was factually an incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he rejected those praises because the qualities of the Supreme Person were not yet manifest in him. He wanted to stress that one who does not actually possess these qualities should not try to engage his followers and devotees in offering him glory for them, even though these qualities might be manifest in the future. If a man who does not factually possess the attributes of a great personality engages his followers in praising him with the expectation that such attributes will develop in the future, that sort of praise is actually an insult.