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Who is speaking?
Every chapter of the Bhāgavatam, coloured by how many narrators deep it goes. Choose one to see its frames and every verse where a new voice begins.
335 chapters
The depth map
SB 4.8 · 3 voices deep
Dhruva Mahārāja Leaves Home for the Forest
The frames this chapter sits inside, outermost first. Choose one to read its note and the verse where its voice begins.
Vidura's long hearing from the sage Maitreya. Almost all of Cantos 3 and 4 are spoken inside it.
Where this voice begins
“Śrī Maitreya said: O Vidura, all glory unto you. You have inquired from me of the greatest of all goodness, and thus you have shown your mercy both to the world and to me because your mind is always absorbed in thoughts of the Transcendence.”
In the translation
Voices in this chapter
Each verse whose translation opens by naming its speaker, in order. Repeated openings by the same speaker are grouped.
- 4.8.1Maitreya Ṛṣi· 3 openings
- 4.8.11Queen Suruci
- 4.8.14Maitreya Ṛṣi
- 4.8.18Sunīti· 2 openings
- 4.8.24Maitreya Ṛṣi
- 4.8.27Nārada Muni· 2 openings
- 4.8.35Dhruva Mahārāja
- 4.8.39Maitreya Ṛṣi
- 4.8.40Nārada Muni· 4 openings
- 4.8.65The King
- 4.8.68Nārada Muni
- 4.8.70Maitreya Ṛṣi
- 4.8.81The demigods
- 4.8.82The Supreme Personality of Godhead
The frames come from where the translation itself says who is speaking (“Śukadeva Gosvāmī said …”). Their exact start and end verses, the episode labels and the setting bands are study aids, not words of the scripture; Śrīla Prabhupāda's purport on each verse is always the final word.