Verse 1

¹Each one of those women bore Krsna ten sons, and not one of them fell short of his father in the whole wealth of what he was. ²Seeing the Unfallen settled there and never going out of the house, each king's daughter took him for her own dearest; the women did not know what he truly is. ³Bewildered by his lovely face like the cup of a lotus, by his long arms and eyes, by his loving laughter and the taste of his glances and his charming talk, the women could not, with any art of theirs, conquer the mind of the Bhagavan, who is spread everywhere. ⁴His sixteen thousand wives were adepts at the love-charms shot from the circle of the brows, at the sidelong half-smile that lets a feeling show and takes the heart. Yet with the arrows of the bodiless one, and by every means they had, they could not shake one sense of his.

⁵So, having got Fortune's lord for a husband, whose path even Brahma and the rest do not know, those women served him with a gladness that never let up but only grew, longing for his loving laughter, his glances, and each fresh coming together. ⁶Going out to meet him, giving him a seat, honouring him well, washing his feet, betel, rest for his limbs, the fan, scents and garlands, dressing his hair, his bed, his bath, gifts: though they had maids by the hundred, the wives themselves did this service for the mighty one.