ly abridged, from Sir William Jones's
translation.[50] From the first book, on Creation:--

"The universe existed in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable,
undiscoverable, and undiscovered; as if immersed in sleep."

"Then the self-existing power, undiscovered himself, but making the
world discernible, with the five elements and other principles,
appeared in undiminished glory, dispelling the gloom."

"He, whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the
external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity,
even he, the soul of all beings, shone forth in person.

"He having willed to produce various beings from his own divine
substance, first with a thought created the waters, and placed in them
a productive seed."

"The seed became an egg bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with
a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born himself, in the form of
Brahma, the great forefather of all spirits.

"The waters are called Nara, because they were the production of Nara,
or the spirit of God; and hence they were his first ayana, or place of
motion; he hence is named Nara yana, or moving on the waters.

"In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the creator,
at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to
divide itself.

"And from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth
beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions,
and the permanent receptacle of waters.

"From the supreme soul he drew forth mind, existing substantially
though unperceived by sense, immaterial; and before mind, or the
reasoning power, he produced consciousness, the internal monitor, the
ruler.

"And before them both he produced the great principle of the soul, or
first expansion of the divine idea; and all vital forms endued with the
three qualities of goodness, passion, and darkness, and the five
perceptions of sense, and the five organs of sensation.

"Thus, having at once pervaded with emanations from the Supreme Spirit
the minutest portions of fixed principles immensely operative,
consciousness and the five perceptions, he framed all creatures.

"Thence proceed the great elements, endued with peculiar powers, and
mind with operations infinitely subtile, the unperishable cause of all
apparent forms.

"This universe, therefore, is