5.120
sei ta’ ’ananta’ ’sesa’--bhakta-avatara
isvarera seva vina nahi jane ara
SYNONYMS
sei ta’-that; ananta—Lord Ananta; sesa—the incarnation Sesa; bhakta-avatara—incarnation of a devotee; isvarera seva—the service of the Lord; vina—without; nahi—not; jane—knows; ara—anything else.
That Ananta Sesa is the devotee incarnation of Godhead.
He knows nothing but service to Lord Krsna.
PURPORT
Srila Jiva Gosvami, in his Krsna-sandarbha, has described Sesa Naga as follows: “Sri Anantadeva has thousands of faces and is fully independent.
Always ready to serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He waits upon Him constantly.
Sankarsana is the first expansion of Vasudeva, and because He appears by His own will, He is called svarat, fully independent.
He is therefore infinite and transcendental to all limits of time and space.
He Himself appears as the thousand-headed Sesa.” In the Skanda Purana, in the Ayodhya-mahatmya chapter, the demigod Indra requested Lord Sesa, who was standing before him as Laksmana, “Please go to Your eternal abode, Visnuloka, where Your expansion Sesa, with His serpentine hoods, is also present.” After thus dispatching Laksmana to the regions of Patala, Lord Indra returned to his abode.
This quotation indicates that the Sankarsana of the quadruple form descends with Lord Rama as Laksmana.
When Lord Rama disappears, Sesa again separates Himself from the personality of Laksmana.
Sesa then returns to His own abode in the Patala regions, and Laksmana returns to His abode in Vaikuntha.
The Laghu-bhagavatamrta gives the following description: “The Sankarsana of the second group of quadruple forms appears as Rama, taking with Him Sesa, who bears the global spheres.
There are two features of Sesa.
One is the bearer of the globes, and the other is the bedstead servitor.
The Sesa who bears the globes is a potent incarnation of Sankarsana, and therefore He is sometimes also called Sankarsana.