Verse 1.25 [Creation of Happiness]

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:

तपो वाचं रतिं चैव कामं च क्रोधमेव च ।
सृष्टिं ससर्ज चैवैमां स्रष्टुमिच्छन्निमाः प्रजाः ॥ २५ ॥

tapo vācaṃ ratiṃ caiva kāmaṃ ca krodhameva ca |
sṛṣṭiṃ sasarja caivaimāṃ sraṣṭumicchannimāḥ prajāḥ || 25 ||

Being desirous of bringing into existence these creatures, he created this entire creation (comprising) austerity, speech, happiness, desire and anger.—(25)

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

‘Happiness’—Satisfaction of the mind ‘Desire’—Longing or Love; the rest are well known.

‘He created this creation’ comprising the things mentioned and others of the same kind.—The term ‘this’ refers to the creation of things mentioned in this verse as also that described in the foregoing verses.

‘Being desirous of bringing into existence these creatures’—such, for instance, as the Devas and Asuras, the Yakṣa, the Rākṣasa, and Gandharva and other beings, the vehicle of these beings, in the form of the body equipped with the soul and characteristics, and also Dharma; these he created first of all.

“What sort of verbal expression is this—‘he created the creation’?” It means exactly what is meant by the expression ‘he wrought or did the creation’; as a matter of fact, all verbal roots express some particular form of action, denoted by the root ‘Kṛ’; e.g., ‘cooks’ is synonymous with ‘does the cooking; ‘sacrifices’ is the same as ‘does the sacrificing’; in the expression under question the peculiar form of the action (of creation) having been already expressed by the verbal noun (‘creation’), the root contained in the verb (‘created’) comes to denote only the action. To guard against such an expression living open to the charge of being a needless repetition, involved in the action being spoken of by means of the root in the verb, after it has been already expressed by the verbal noun,—we may take the mention of the verb to be for the purpose of expressing the tense and the voice (which could not be expressed by the verbal noun).—Or, the term ‘creation’ may be taken as standing for the particular created things known by the ordinary means of knowledge and forming the object of the general act of creating expressed by the verb ‘created’; such usage being analogous to the expression ‘svapoṣam puṣṭaḥ,’ ‘reared the rearing by oneself’ (where the rearing qualified by ‘self’ forms the object of the verb ‘reared’, which denotes rearing in general).—(25)