I have thus related to you fully about the descent of knowledge on earth, with the reason of my birth and the intention of the lotus born Brahmá (in making me his apostle).
2. Now Ráma, as you are eager to learn the transcendental knowledge, and feel so great an anxiety for it in your mind, it must be the effect of your pristine merit.
3. Ráma said:—How was it sir, that the Supreme lord felt a desire to send down knowledge on earth after his creation of it (and not along with it?)
4. Vasishtha replied:—This Brahmá is in his own nature the same with the Supreme Brahm, and is born in him, as a billow is born of the waters of the deep. (The co-eternal logos).
5. This great lord saw the imperfection of his creation, and saw its whole course (at one view) in times past, present and future. (The perversion of mankind subsequent to their fall).
6. He saw the decay of ceremonial rites after the end of the Satya (golden) and other ages, and considering the error to which men were to fall afterward, he felt pity for their states (for want of sacrifices).
7. Then the Lord thought of endowing me with true knowledge, and sent me on the surface of the earth for dispelling the ignorance of mankind.
8. Like me he has sent also some other great sages here, as Sanat Kumára, Nárada and many others also.
9. He has sent them all for the redemption of mankind from the fetters of their ignorance by a series of meritorious acts, and their progress in divine knowledge also.
10. These great sages seeing at the end of the past golden age, the gradual decay of the holy ritualistic rites on earth: