The hosts of gods, Brahmā and the rest, do not know, do not understand. What do they not know? My origin, My power, the surpassing might of My lordship; or else My origin, My coming-to-be. Nor do the great seers, Bhṛgu and the rest, know it. Why do they not know it? Because I am the beginning, the cause, of the gods and the great seers, in every way. Further.

Neither the host of gods nor the great seers, though they see what is beyond the senses and have far greater knowledge, know My origin, My power; they do not know My name, deeds, own form, own nature, and the rest. Why? Because in every way I am their beginning, the beginning of the gods and the great seers; of their own form and of their knowledge, power, and the rest, I myself am the beginning. The knowledge given by Me, conforming to the merit that is the cause of their being gods, being great seers, and so on, is bounded; so they, of bounded knowledge, do not know My own form and the rest as it truly is. This very knowledge, whose object is the truth of the unthinkable own-form of the gods and the rest, is the means of release from the sin that obstructs the rise of devotion. The Lord states it.

'Prabhava' means power, or My origination of the world; it is called 'His' because that origination is in His control. If the gods had a birth, then beings even below the gods would know it, being all-knowing; hence He has none; that is the sense. The words 'for I am the origin' are meant to make known that He, of whom even origination is in His control, can Himself have no birth. It was also said, 'I am the origin and the dissolution of the whole world' (7.6). All this has been said elsewhere too: 'who truly knows, who here can declare, whence it was born, whence this sending-forth? the gods are on the hither side of its sending-forth; who then knows whence it came to be?' (Rigveda 8.7.17.6; Taittiriya Brahmana 2.8-9), and 'neither the seers nor the gods know His power, how then others, of small steadiness and measure?' (the supplementary hymns of the Rigveda). A further meaning is known from the verse itself, 'he who knows Me as unborn' (10.3).