গর্ভ স্তুতিঃ (দেব কৃতম্)

Forty-two names of Krishna spoken by the gods while he is still unborn — from the seventh chapter of the Krishna-janma-khanda in the Brahmavaivarta Purana — and the first of them is placed with deliberate point: womb of the world, himself of no womb, endless and undecaying. What follows is built almost entirely of paired opposites, which is how the hymn manages a god about to be born: with qualities and without them; formed out of deference to his devotees, and formless; giver of happiness and giver of sorrow; fortunate and unfortunate; the cause of the Veda, and the Veda, and the one who knows it. Its own instruction is to rise at dawn and read the forty-two through. The gods bow again and again with tears in their eyes, rain down flowers and go home — and the last line leaves rain falling and the whole of Mathura gone still.