yatra yena yato yasya
yasmai yad yad yathÄ yadÄ
syÄd idaá¹ bhagavÄn sÄká¹£Ät
pradhÄna-puruá¹£eÅ›varaḥ
yatra - in which; yena - by which; yataḥ - from which; yasya - of which; yasmai - unto which; yat yat - whatever; yathÄ - however; yadÄ - whenever; syÄt - comes into existence; idam - this (creation); bhagavÄn - the Supreme Lord; sÄká¹£Ät - in His personal presence; pradhÄna-puruá¹£a - of nature and its creator (MahÄ-Viṣṇu); īśvaraḥ - the predominator.
To casual observers the known world appears to be produced by many different agents. A good indication of this conception is language itself, which traditional Sanskrit grammarians explain as reflecting the visible diversity of nature. In the standard Sanskrit grammar taught by the sage PÄṇini, the verb, expressing action, is taken to be the essential core of a sentence, and all the other words function in relation to it. Nouns, for example, are put into any of several cases to show their particular relationship to the verb in a sentence. These relationships of noun to verb are called kÄrakas, namely the relations of subject (kartÄ, “who doesâ€), object (karma, “what is doneâ€), instrument (karaṇa, “by whichâ€), recipient (sampradÄna, “for or toward whichâ€), source (apadÄna, “from or because of whichâ€) and location (adhikaraṇa, “in whichâ€). Apart from these kÄrakas, nouns may also sometimes point to other nouns in a possessive sense, and there are also various kinds of adverbs of time, place and manner. But although language thus seems to indicate the activity of many separate agents in the manifest creation, the deeper truth is that all grammatical forms refer first of all to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In this verse Vasudeva makes this point by glorifying his two exalted sons in terms of the different grammatical forms.