Verse 17

¹⁷Urged by Brahma to the bringing forth, Atri, best of those who know Brahman, went with his wife to Rksa, one of the great mountains, and stood there in austerity. ¹⁸In that wood of clustered blossoms, of palasa and asoka trees, loud on every side with the running waters of the Nirvindhya, ¹⁹the sage held his mind in by the restraint of the breath for a hundred years, and stood on one foot, past the pairs of opposites, feeding on air. ²⁰I go for refuge to him who is the Lord of the world; let him give me offspring like myself. That was what he was thinking. ²¹Seeing the three worlds scorched by the fire that came out of the sage's head, fed by his holding of the breath, the three from whom all comes,

²²with their fame spread abroad by apsarases and sages and gandharvas, by perfected ones and holders of knowledge and serpents, came to that hermitage.