36. Thus Brahmá became the preserver of many kinds of beings, which he created of his own will from his mind at each stage or kalpa-period; of which he was the first that issued from Brahma himself. (He was the first begotten, and nothing was created but by him).
37. When Brahmá was first begotten, he remained in his happy state of insensibility and forgetfulness (of his former existence); but being delivered from his torpor in the womb, he came to see the light. (i.e. He saw the light of heaven, after his delivery from the darkness of the womb).
38. He took a corporeal body, with its breathings and respirations (pránápána); it was covered with pores of hair, and furnished with gums of two and thirty teeth. It had the three pots of the thighs, backbone, and bones, standing on the feet below; with the five air, five partitions, nine cavities, and a smooth skin covering all the limbs. (The five airs are pránápána &c. The five partitions are, the head, the legs, the breast, belly and the hands).
40. It is accompanied by twice ten fingers and their nails on them; and with a couple of arms and palms and two or more hands and eyes (in the cases of gods and giants).
41. The body is the nest of the bird of the mind, and it is hole of the snake of lust; it is the cave of the goblin of greediness, and the den of the lion of life.
42. It is a chain at the feet of the elephant of pride, and a lake of the lotuses of our desire; The lord Brahmá looked upon his handsome body, and saw it was good.
43. Then the lord thought in himself, from his view of the three times of the past, present and future, and from his sight of the vault of heaven, with a dark mist as a group of flying locusts.
44. “What is this boundless space, and what had it been before. How came I to being?” Thus pondering in himself, he was enlightened in his soul. (Thus did Adam inquire about his birth, and the production of the world in Milton’s Paradise Lost).
45. He saw in his mind the different past creations, and recollected the various religions and their various sects, which had grown upon earth one after the other.
46. He produced the holy Vedas as the spring does its flowers; and formed with ease all varieties of creatures from their archetypes in his mind.