HV 77.1
ते च देवाः समुनयो हते कंसे दुरात्मनि । नमस्कृत्य जगन्नाथं स्वं स्वं जग्मुर् यथालयम् । तुष्टुवुः पुण्डरीकाक्षं कृष्णं विजयिनं विभुम् ॥
te ca devāḥ samunayo hate kaṃse durātmani | namaskṛtya jagannāthaṃ svaṃ svaṃ jagmur yathālayam | tuṣṭuvuḥ puṇḍarīkākṣaṃ kṛṣṇaṃ vijayinaṃ vibhum
Then the gods together with the sages, Kaṃsa the evil-souled being slain, having bowed to the Lord of the worlds, each departed to his own abode, praising Puṇḍarīkākṣa the victorious, sovereign Kṛṣṇa.
The Living Words
The structure of the verse is an ascent-and-departure. *Namaskṛtya*, having bowed; *jagmur yathālayam*, each went to his own home; *tuṣṭuvuḥ*, they praised. The praise is not delivered in front of the Lord but on the way home. The verse's second half of the chapter carries the famous stuti itself: *hatvā pūtānikāṃ, vibhajya śakaṭaṃ, bhaṅktvārjunau dānavān, ... niṣpīḍya riṣṭetaram, hatvā keśinam unmadam, coddhṛtya govardhanam, yaḥ kaṃsaṃ sagajendramallam avadhīt, tasmai namo viṣṇave* — Pūtanā slain, the cart broken, the twin Arjuna-trees rent, demons killed, Kāliya's poison crushed, Ariṣṭa pressed down, mad Keśin killed, Govardhana raised, Kaṃsa with his elephant and wrestlers cut down. The whole Viṣṇu-parva comes home to roost in a single meter.
The Heart of It
This is the verse an assembly of devotees reaches for when it wants to name the whole childhood of Kṛṣṇa at once. For the Harivaṃśa's own reader it performs a quiet transition: the long sequence of chapters from Pūtanā through Kaṃsa has reached its close, and the text pauses to gather everything in a single breath before moving to whatever happens next. Notice that the catalog is all verbs of action, all past tense, all done to someone else's evil. The verse does not praise the god for his beauty; it praises him for what he has removed. This is the function of stuti at the end of a crisis: to put the crisis down by reciting its undoing. Jñāneśvar's own grateful inventories of "what the Name does" are in this lineage.