Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 4.5.1

maitreya uvāca

bhavo bhavānyā nidhanaḿ prajāpater

asat-kṛtāyā avagamya nāradāt

sva-pārṣada-sainyaḿ ca tad-adhvararbhubhir

vidrāvitaḿ krodham apāram ādadhe

SYNONYMS

maitreyaḥ uvāca — Maitreya said; bhavaḥ — Lord Śiva; bhavānyāḥ — of Satī; nidhanam — the death; prajāpateḥ — because of Prajāpati Dakṣa; asat-kṛtāyāḥ — having been insulted; avagamya — hearing about; nāradāt — from Nārada; sva-pārṣada-sainyam — the soldiers of his own associates; ca — and; tat-adhvara — (produced from) his (Dakṣa's) sacrifice; ṛbhubhiḥ — by the Ṛbhus; vidrāvitam — were driven away; krodham — anger; apāram — unbounded; ādadhe — showed.

TRANSLATION

Maitreya said: When Lord Śiva heard from Nārada that Satī, his wife, was now dead because of Prajāpati Dakṣa's insult to her and that his soldiers had been driven away by the Ṛbhu demigods, he became greatly angry.

PURPORT

Lord Śiva understood that Satī, being the youngest daughter of Dakṣa, could present the case of Lord Śiva's purity of purpose and would thus be able to mitigate the misunderstanding between Dakṣa and himself. But such a compromise was not attained, and Satī was deliberately insulted by her father by not being received properly when she visited his house without being invited. Satī herself could have killed her father, Dakṣa, because she is the personified material energy and has immense power to kill and create within this material universe. In the Brahma-saḿhitā her strength is described: she is capable of creating and dissolving many universes. But although she is so powerful, she acts under the direction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, as His shadow. It would not have been difficult for Satī to punish her father, but she thought that since she was his daughter, it was not proper for her to kill him. Thus she decided to give up her own body, which she had obtained from his, and Dakṣa did not even check her.

When Satī passed away, giving up her body, the news was conveyed by Nārada to Lord Śiva. Nārada always carries the news of such events because he knows their import. When Lord Śiva heard that his chaste wife, Satī, was dead, he naturally became exceedingly angry. He also understood that Bhṛgu Muni had created the Ṛbhudeva demigods by uttering the mantras of the Yajur Veda and that these demigods had driven away all of his soldiers who were present in the arena of sacrifice. Therefore, he wanted to reply to this insult, and thus he decided to kill Dakṣa because he was the cause of the death of Satī.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness