No Shore to Shiva's Story
Bala Kanda, Doha 103
Doha 103 · Movement 3 of 3
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The deeds of Girija's Lord spread like an ocean without a farther shore. Even the Vedas enter that immensity and cannot reach its end. Wave after wave of divine play passes beneath their searching hymns.
Tulsidas looks at his own small vessel of speech and calls himself dull, rustic, and unable. The confession is not refusal. It is the reverence with which a finite voice approaches the infinite.
The wedding has been told, but Shiva has not been exhausted. Every ending upon this ocean is only the place where one telling must turn.
The poet lowers his voice while Shiva's ocean continues beyond sight.
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AI-created devotional illustration · Doha 103
Symbolic imagined Tulsidas self-effacing reflection
Source reference and artistic choices
Gita Press code81 undated · PDF pages 120 · printed pages 118. Reader passage: bala-kanda-doha-104. Printed numbering may differ.
Source facts
- Shiva/Girija's husband's story is compared to ocean; even Vedas cannot reach far shore
- Tulsidas self-effacingly calls himself dull/rustic and asks how he can describe it; no literal illiteracy or nonexistent-shore assertion
Artistic choices
- Approved imagined Tulsidas portrait reused, older brown greybeard/hairknot creamochre beads/mark, thoughtful lowered face/one hand at chest/one low open palm, exact ages/faces/poses imagined not authenticated biography
- Blank folio/closed unlabelled two books/resting stylus/low stand/leaves/floral accents/pinkfield symbolize authored reflection, not this doha's prescribed objects/writing act or documented location
- No literal ocean crossing, personified Vedas, educational/cognitive diagnosis or staged arati scene
An imaginative interpretation, not a historical portrait or documentary evidence.
चरित सिंधु गिरिजा रमन बेद न पावहिं पारु। बरनै तुलसीदासु किमि अति मतिमंद गवाँरु।।103।।
The story of the husband of Girija (Shiva) is a boundless ocean; even the Vedas cannot reach its far shore. How then can the dull-witted, rustic Tulsidas ever hope to describe it?