Holding down, bringing under control, My own Nature, again and again I send forth this whole, entire host of beings, the aggregate of beings born from Nature, this present one, helpless, with no will of its own, brought under another's sway by faults such as ignorance, by force of Nature, by force of its own disposition. But then, would not You, the supreme Lord, fashioning this unequal host of beings, be bound by a connection with the merit and demerit that occasion it? In answer the Blessed Lord says this.

Taking hold of My own nature, which transforms in manifold ways, transforming it eightfold, this fourfold troop of beings, whose nature is god, animal, man, and unmoving thing, I send forth again and again, age after age, helpless under the sway of My deluding, quality-made nature. If so, then the actions of unequal creation and the rest bind the Blessed One by fastening on Him cruelty and the like. To this the Lord speaks.

His 'leaning on prakriti' is like a man who, though able to walk by his foot, walks in play leaning on a staff. So the Moksha-dharma says, 'you must not think Him to be joined with the qualities of all beings in that way', and 'you must know Me, the divine one, as joined with the qualities of all beings', and 'having known the seven subtle ones and the six-limbed great Lord, one who stands in the use of the principal one reaches the supreme Brahman'. And in the supplementary hymns of the Rigveda, 'nowhere is the power of that great Lord, endless in its forms, hindered; yet, mounting maya, the God engages in the creations and dissolutions'. And the Bhagavata says, 'in Me, the endless, of endless qualities, of endless body by reason of those qualities' (Bhagavata 6.4.28); the Atharvana says, 'why is He called the supreme Brahman? because He swells and makes swell' (Atharvashiras Upanishad 4); and 'His supreme power is heard of as manifold' (Shvetashvatara Upanishad 6.8); and 'I now proclaim the valiant deeds of Vishnu, who measured out the earthly regions' (Rigveda 2.2.24.1), 'neither one being born, nor one already born, O Vishnu, O God, has reached the far limit of your greatness' (Rigveda 5.6.24.2). 'Helpless through the power of prakriti': the Gautama supplementary hymns say, 'you alone, in this creation, in all action, though of endless power, act by your own maya; and this world is helpless and under the sway of maya, and therefore you will create, devour and protect it, O Lord Vishnu'.