Verse 1

¹We wish to know the maya of Visnu, the highest, the Lord, which bewilders even those who work illusions of their own. Revered ones, tell it to us. ²Tasting your words, which are the nectar of Hari's story, I am not filled. I am a mortal scorched by the burning of the round of birth, and this is the medicine for that burning. ³With these great elements the self of beings, the first one, brought forth beings high and low, great-armed king, for the sake of his own portions and so that he himself might be made known. ⁴Having entered the beings so made, by way of the five substances, he divides himself one way and ten ways, and takes his taste of the strands.

⁵The master, taking his enjoyment of the strands by way of the strands, which are lit by himself, thinks what has been made here to be himself, and so sticks fast in it. ⁶Wearing a body, doing works by works, and each work with its occasion behind it, taking the fruit of one work after another, he wanders here through what is pleasant and what is not. ⁷Going along the courses that works open up, and they carry much that is not good, the person has no say in it: he undergoes the making and the dissolving of the world until the great flooding comes.