Text 27
ṛtvija ūcuḥ
tattvaṁ na te vayam anañjana rudra-śāpāt
karmaṇy avagraha-dhiyo bhagavan vidāmaḥ
dharmopalakṣaṇam idaṁ trivṛd adhvarākhyaṁ
jñātaṁ yad-artham adhidaivam ado vyavasthāḥ
ṛtvijaḥ — the priests; ūcuḥ — began to say; tattvam — truth; na — not; te — of Your Lordship; vayam — all of us; anañjana — without material contamination; rudra — Lord Śiva; śāpāt — by his curse; karmaṇi — in fruitive activities; avagraha — being too much attached; dhiyaḥ — of such intelligence; bhagavan — O Lord; vidāmaḥ — know; dharma — religion; upalakṣaṇam — symbolized; idam — this; tri-vṛt — the three departments of knowledge of the Vedas; adhvara — sacrifice; ākhyam — of the name; jñātam — known to us; yat — that; artham — for the matter of; adhidaivam — for worshiping the demigods; adaḥ — this; vyavasthāḥ — arrangement.
The priests addressed the Lord, saying: O Lord, transcendental to material contamination, by the curse offered by Lord Śiva’s men we have become attached to fruitive activities, and thus we are now fallen and therefore do not know anything about You. On the contrary, we are now involved in the injunctions of the three departments of the Vedic knowledge under the plea of executing rituals in the name of yajña. We know that You have made arrangements for distributing the respective shares of the demigods.
The Vedas are known as traiguṇya-viṣayā vedāḥ (Bg. 2.45). Those who are serious students of the Vedas are very much attached to the ritualistic ceremonies mentioned in the Vedas, and therefore these veda-vādīs cannot understand that the ultimate goal of the Vedas is to understand Lord Kṛṣṇa, or Viṣṇu. Those who have transcended the qualitative Vedic attractions, however, can understand Kṛṣṇa, who is never contaminated by the material qualities. Therefore Lord Viṣṇu is addressed here as anañjana, “free from material contamination.” In Bhagavad-gītā (2.42) the crude Vedic scholars have been deprecated by Kṛṣṇa as follows:
yām imāṁ puṣpitāṁ vācaṁ
pravadanty avipaścitaḥ
veda-vāda-ratāḥ pārtha
nānyad astīti vādinaḥ
“Men of small knowledge are very much attached to the flowery words of the Vedas, and they say that there is nothing more than this.”