14. In him reside the deities Indra and Yama and the sun and moon, who are renowned and hallowed in the scriptures; and in him abide the five elemental creation, and they that have become the regents (of heaven and earth).
15. That the one thing is virtue and therefore expedient, and the other is vice and therefore improper, are both placed in him as his ordinances (or eternal laws); and depending on the free agency (sankalpa) of men, to accept or reject the one or the other for good or evil. (Hence there is no positive virtue or vice, nor God the author of good and evil; but it is the obedience or disobedience to his fixed laws, that amounts to the one or other).
16. It is obedience to the Divine ordinance, that the gods are still employed in their fixed charges with their steady minds.
17. The lord Yama is accustomed to make his penance, at the end of every four yugas (or kalpa age), on account of his greatness in destruction of the creatures of God. (Yama the Indian Pluto and god of death.)
18. Sometimes he sat penitent for eight years, and all others for a dozen of years, often times he made his penance for five or seven years, and many times for full sixteen years.
19. On a certain occasion as Yama sat observant of his austerity, and indifferent to his duty, death ceased to hunt after living beings in all the worlds.
20. Hence the multitude of living beings filled the surface of the earth, and made ground pathless and impassable by others. They multiplied like the filth born gnats in the rainy weather, that obstruct the passage of elephants.
21. Then the gods sat together in council, and after various deliberations came to determine the extirpation of all living beings, for relieving the over burdened earth. (This was to be done by the Bharata war celebrated in the great epic of the Mahábhárata).
22. In this way many ages have passed away, and many changes have taken place in the usages of the people, and unnumbered living beings have passed and gone with the revolutions of the worlds.