Text 15
bahūni santi nāmāni
rūpāṇi ca sutasya te
guṇa-karmānurūpāṇi
tāny ahaṁ veda no janāḥ
bahūni — various; santi — there are; nāmāni — names; rūpāṇi — forms; ca — also; sutasya — of the son; te — your; guṇa-karma-anu-rūpāṇi — according to His attributes and activities; tāni — them; aham — I; veda — know; no janāḥ — not ordinary persons.
For this son of yours there are many forms and names according to His transcendental qualities and activities. These are known to me, but people in general do not understand them.
Bahūni: the Lord has many names. Advaitam acyutam anādim ananta-rūpam ādyaṁ purāṇa-puruṣaṁ nava-yauvanaṁ ca. As stated in the Brahma-saṁhitā (5.33), the Lord is one, but He has many forms and many names. It was not that because Garga Muni gave the child the name Kṛṣṇa, that was His only name. He has other names, such as Bhaktavatsala, Giridhārī, Govinda and Gopāla. If we analyze the nirukti, or semantic derivation, of the word “Kṛṣṇa,” we find that na signifies that He stops the repetition of birth and death, and kṛṣ means sattārtha, or “existence.” (Kṛṣṇa is the whole of existence.) Also, kṛṣ means “attraction,” and na means ānanda, or “bliss.” Kṛṣṇa is known as Mukunda because He wants to give everyone spiritual, eternal, blissful life. Unfortunately, because of the living entity’s little independence, the living entity wants to “deprogram” the program of Kṛṣṇa. This is the material disease. Nonetheless, because Kṛṣṇa wants to give transcendental bliss to the living entities, He appears in various forms. Therefore He is called Kṛṣṇa. Because Garga Muni was an astrologer, he knew what others did not know. Yet Kṛṣṇa has so many names that even Garga Muni did not know them all. It is to be concluded that Kṛṣṇa, according to His transcendental activities, has many names and many forms.