CHAPTER EIGHT
Lord Krsna Shows
the Universal Form Within His Mouth
The summary of the Eighth Chapter is as follows. This chapter describes
the ceremony of giving a name to Krsna. It also describes His crawling,
His playing with the cows, and His eating earth and again showing the
universal form to His mother.

One day, Vasudeva sent for Gargamuni, the family priest of the yadu-
varnsa, and thus Gargamuni went to the house of Nanda Maharaja, who
received him very well and requested him to give names to Krsna and
Balarama. Gargamuni, of course, reminded Nanda Maharaja that Karmsa
was looking for the son of Devaki and said that if he performed the
ceremony very gorgeously, the ceremony would come to the notice of
Karnsa, who would then suspect that Krsna was the son of Devaki. Nanda
Maharaja therefore requested Gargamuni to perform this ceremony
without anyone’s knowledge, and Gargamuni did so. Because Balarama,
the son of Rohini, increases the transcendental bliss of others, His name
is Rama, and because of His extraordinary strength, He is called
Baladeva. He attracts the Yadus to follow His instructions, and therefore
His name is Sankarsana. Krsna, the son of Yasoda, previously appeared
in many other colors, such as white, red and yellow, and He had now
assumed the color black. Because He was sometimes the son of Vasudeva,
His name is Vasudeva. According to His various activities and qualities,
He has many other names. After thus informing Nanda Maharaja and
completing the name-giving ceremony, Gargamuni advised Nanda
Maharaja to protect his son very carefully and then departed.

Sukadeva Gosvami next described how the two children crawled,
walked on Their small legs, played with the cows and calves, stole butter
and other milk products and broke the butter pots. In this way, he de-
scribed many naughty activities of Krsna and Balarama. The most won-
derful of these occurred when Krsna’s playmates complained to mother
Yasoda that Krsna was eating earth. Mother Yasoda wanted to open

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