17:28 The Bhágavata, which gives a similar statement of the origin of the elements, senses, and divinities, specifies the last to be Diś (space), air, the sun, Prachetas, the Aswins, fire, Indra, Upendra, Mitra, and Ka or Prajápati, presiding over the senses, according to the comment, or severally over the ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose, speech, hands, feet, and excretory and generative organs. Bhag. II. 5. 31.

18:29 Avyaktánugraheńa. The expression is something equivocal, as Avyakta may here apply either to the First Cause or to matter. In either case the notion is the same, and the aggregation of the elements is the effect of the presidence of spirit, without any active interference of the indiscrete principle. The Avyakta is passive in the evolution and combination of Mahat and the rest. Pradhána is, no doubt, intended, but its identification with the Supreme is also implied. The term Anugraha may also refer to a classification of the order of creation, which will be again adverted to.

18:30 It is impossible not to refer this notion to the same origin as the widely diffused opinion of antiquity, of the first manifestation of the world in the form of an egg. "It seems to have been a favourite symbol, and very ancient, and we find it adopted among many nations." Bryant, III. 165. Traces of it occur amongst the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians; and besides the Orphic egg amongst the Greeks, and that described by Aristophanes, Τέκτεν πρώτιστον ὑπηνέμιον νὺξ ἡ μελανόπτερος ὠόν part of the ceremony in the Dionysiaca and other mysteries consisted of the consecration of an egg; by which, according to Porphyry, was signified the world: Ἑρμηνεὺει δὲ τὸ ὠὸν τὸν κόσμον. Whether this egg typified the ark, as Bryant and Faber suppose, is not material to the proof of the antiquity and wide diffusion of the belief that the world in the beginning existed in such a figure. A similar account of the first aggregation of the elements in the form of an egg is given in all the Puráńas, with the usual epithet Haima or Hiranya, 'golden,' as it occurs in Manu, I. 9.

19:31 Here is another analogy to the doctrines of antiquity relating to the mundane egg: and as the first visible male being, who, as we shall hereafter see, united in himself the nature of either sex, abode in the egg, and issued from it; so "this firstborn of the world, whom they represented under two shapes and characters, and who sprung from the mundane egg, was the person from whom the mortals and immortals were derived. He was the same as Dionusus, whom they styled, πρωτόγονον διφνῆ τρίγονον Βακχεῖον Ἄνακτα Ἄγριον ἀρρητὸν κρύφιον δικέρωτα δίμοφον:" or, with the omission of one epithet, , ###.

19:32 Janárddana is derived from Jana, 'men,' and Arddana, 'worship;' 'the object of adoration to mankind.'