Govardhana Puja Lecture
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New York, November 4, 1966
Prabhupada: Today Govardhanadhari, Giridhari, Lord Krsna, today lifted the mountain. According to Vedic literature there are different demigods. Sometimes you will find in Greek mythology the gods of the water, gods of the thunderbolt. These are not imagination. Actually they are facts. But due to our insufficient knowledge we do not know how the material nature is being controlled. So when Krsna was on this planet and He was playing the part of a cowherd boy, and it was known to all over the universe that "God has come, taken incarnation, and He is on the earth planet, and He is at Vrndavana playing the part of a cowherd boy..." So as if somebody, if there is incarnation of God, somebody believes and somebody does not believe, when Krsna was actually present on this earth, it is not that everybody understood that Krsna was the Supreme Personality of Godhead, not even up to date. Only few persons, the five brothers of the Pandavas and the damsels of Vrndavana, only in the fingers' count, say, out of the whole population, say, hundred or two hundred men knew Him that He was the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Otherwise everyone thought that "He is an ordinary man just like one of us, but most powerful. That's all." Similarly, the demigods in other planets, they also thought, "Oh, he's a foolish person. They are thinking of a cowherd boy as God," sophisticated, like that. And especially Indra, the heavenly kingdom..., king of heaven. He was... He's very powerful, so he thought, "What god he has come? My God, He cannot come." This was some speculation. Even Brahma also speculated. But Krsna wanted to show Indra that "Yes, actually I have come." So that incidence is today, Govardhana-puja.
So,
bhagavan api tatraiva
baladeva-samyutah
apasyan nivasan gopan
indra-yaga-krtodyaman
Indra-yaga-krtodyaman. According to Vedic system, there are different types of sacrifices to offer respect and obeisances to the demigods. Just like the sun is supplying light, the moon is supplying moonshine. Similarly, Indra is supplying the cloud. Similarly, there are different demigods. And in the Bhagavad-gita, devan ya yajayanti deva-bhavan--these things are described. In the Vedic literature it is prescribed that "You should satisfy these demigods by sacrifice, deva-yajan." So in the village of that Vrndavana, the father of Krsna, foster father of Krsna, Nanda Maharaja and his associates, they were yearly performing the Indra-yajna. Because they were agriculturists, they depended on rain, sufficient rains. And he had many cows. Nanda Maharaja was a farm man. He is agriculture and cows. The mercantile people, the vaisya community, they are recommended three things: krsi-go-raksya-vanijyam. Krsi means agriculture, and go-raksya means cow protection, and vanijyam means trade. So Nanda Maharaja belonged to the vaisya community. So he was well-to-do man, very rich man, and he had 900,000's of cows. 900,000 of cows he was protecting. Formerly, according to Vedic civilization, a man was considered to be rich man in proportion of his stock of grains and livestock, cows. That's all. Dhanyena dhanavan. A man was considered to be rich man if he has sufficient quantity of grains in his possession. Similarly, if one has sufficient number of cows in his possession, he was considered rich man. Not that bank balance. There was no such bank, neither this paper money. They actually possessing the foodstuff and milk. And actually this is economic solution. If you have got sufficient milk, then you can make so many nice nutritious, full of vitamin values preparation and grains. There is no question of economic starvation if you have got simply grains and cows. So that was the standard of economic solution in days yore.
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