valmikiramayan.net Prose Commentary

Desiraju Hanumanta Rao's prose rendering with embedded explanatory notes

The source identifies the 'timeless, changeless, perishless' Unmanifest Brahma at the start of this genealogy as Vishnu himself, under the epithet avyakta, 'the Unprovable' -- unprovable because he cannot be established by ordinary means of knowledge like perception, inference, or scripture. It notes Ramayana has no place for a featureless, attributeless Absolute of pure non-dualism, since Valmiki's own opening question to Narada asks 'who possesses qualities,' making this a Brahma with qualities. It cites the same term, aakaasha, from three sources as a name for the Absolute: the Chandogya Upanishad ('that which makes names and forms is your innermost inner space, that alone is deathless'), the Taittiriya Upanishad ('who could sustain himself if this aakaasha did not exist'), and the Brahma Sutra ('the small aakaasha is the Absolute, per subsequent texts'). The three epithets -- timeless, changeless, perishless -- are explained as spanning even the vast cosmic units of years called para artha, since this Brahma, though itself derived from Vishnu, endures beyond even that scale without alteration.