Verse 57

⁵⁰Hearing this said, the Bhagavan, who takes away the pain of those who bow to him, took the man's hand in his own hand and, smiling, spoke to him. ⁵¹Bhagavan said: Brahmin, know that these sages have come here for a favour to you. They go about the worlds with me, making them clean with the dust of their feet. ⁵²Gods, holy fields and fords make a man clean slowly, over time, by being seen and touched and worshipped; and even that they do by the glance of the most worthy. ⁵³A brahmin is better by birth than every living thing here; how much more when he has austerity, learning and contentment, and is joined with a fragment of me.

⁵⁴This form of mine with four arms is not dearer to me than the brahmins. A brahmin is made of all the Veda; I am made of all the gods. ⁵⁵The dull-witted, not knowing this, look down grudgingly on me, their teacher, their own self, the brahmin, having eyes only for the image and its like as the thing to be worshipped. ⁵⁶This world of things that move and do not move, and the states that are its causes: a brahmin, by looking to me, sets it in his heart that these are my forms. ⁵⁷So, brahmin, worship these sages of Brahman with trust in me. If it is done that way, I am truly worshipped, and not otherwise, not by great riches.