28. Its thoughts of the backward and forward, places its back behind, and its breast and belly before it; and the hairs on the head and fingers of the hands, are as the filaments and twigs of trees. 29. In this manner did Brahmá, who is called a _muni_ or mental being, from his having sprung <from> the mind of Brahma, produced the several parts of his body, according to his thoughts of their usefulness to it. 30. He brought the body and its limbs to compactness, as the seasons bring their fruits and grains to perfection. Thus is every thing perfected in time, and all beings have their beautiful bodies and figures. 31. He, the lord Brahmá was the progenitor of all beings, and fraught with the qualities of strength and understanding, activity, dignity and knowledge. (The Smriti attributes the _Siddhi chatushtaya_ or quadruple perfections to him). 32. Being begotten by the vacuous Brahma, he resides in the lap of vacuity; and is of the form of melted gold, like every other luminous body in the heavens. 33. Though situated in the Supreme, yet the mind of Brahmá is liable to the mistakes of its own making; and at times it quite forgets its having no beginning, middle nor end, like its source. 34. Sometimes the lord thinks himself, as identic with the waters which existed before creation in his mind; and at another as the mundane egg, which was as bright as the fire of universal destruction (see Manu I). 35. Sometimes the lord thought himself as the dark wood, which covered the earth before creation of living animals, and them as the lotus bed (wherein he was born). Afterwards he became of many forms at each phase and epoch of creation. (These epochs are called _kalpas_ or periods, in which the divine mind manifested itself according to its wish within the different stages of creation). 36. Thus Brahmá became the preserver of many kinds of beings, which he created of his own will from his mind at each stage or _kalpa_-period; of which he was the first that issued from Brahma himself. (He was the first begotten, and nothing was created but by him). 37. When Brahmá was first begotten, he remained in his happy state of insensibility and forgetfulness (of his former existence); but being delivered from his torpor in the womb, he came to see the light. (_i.e._ He saw the light of heaven, after his delivery from the darkness of the womb). 38. He took a corporeal body, with its breathings and respirations (pránápána); it was covered with pores of hair, and furnished with gums of two and thirty teeth. It had the three pots of the thighs, backbone, and bones, standing on the feet below; with the five air, five partitions, nine cavities, and a smooth skin covering all the limbs. (The five airs are pránápána &c. The five partitions are, the head, the legs, the breast, belly and the hands).