Verse 1.51 [Disappearance of Brahmā]

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

एवं सर्वं स सृष्ट्वैदं मां चाचिन्त्यपराक्रमः ।
आत्मन्यन्तर्दधे भूयः कालं कालेन पीडयन् ॥ ५१ ॥

evaṃ sarvaṃ sa sṛṣṭvaidaṃ māṃ cācintyaparākramaḥ |
ātmanyantardadhe bhūyaḥ kālaṃ kālena pīḍayan || 51 ||

Thus repeatedly suppressing time (of dissolution) by time (of creation and maintenance), he, of inconceivable power, created all this and also myself; [he directed me to maintain it] and then disappeared within himself.—(51)

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

‘Thus’—i.e., something directly himself, and some under Prajāpati’s directions, the Blessed Lord,—having created produced,—all this world,—and having directed to maintain (keep going) this world;—‘He’ whose ‘power,’ sovereignty over all things, is ‘inconceivable,’ amazingly great, the Creator,—‘disappeared,’—brought about his own absorption i.e., having renounced the body that he had, of his own will, taken up, He again became unmanifest;—‘within himself;— other things become absorbed in the Root Evolvent; but He did not become absorbed in any thing else, He disappeared within his own self; He has no other source wherein He could, like other things, become absorbed; for the simple reason that all beings have their source in Him. Or ‘disappearing’ may mean desisting from the entire worldly process.

‘Repeatedly suppressing time by time’—the Present-participle (‘suppressing’) is connected with the verb ‘having oreated’; the meaning being—‘destroying the time of dissolution by the time of creation and maintenance’;—‘again and again; it will lie described later on that ‘there are endless creations and dissolutions.’—(61)