1. Thousand-eyed, unaging, filled with semen, Time pulls (its chariot) as a horse with seven reins. Inspired poets climb aboard it. Its wheels are all beings.
2. This Time pulls seven wheels: seven are their center pieces; their axle is the immortal. Time has reached (?) [añjat/añjaṅ’ ṛñjat*/arñjat*??] all beings. It moves as the foremost deity.
3. A filled jar has been placed upon Time. We see it, although it is manifold. It is turned (upside down?) toward all these beings here. Time—they say that it is in the highest heaven.
4. It alone brought together beings, and it alone encompassed them. Though their father, it became their son. Therefore there is no other higher glory.
5. Time gave rise to the heaven beyond and these earths here. Driven by Time, what has been and what will be stand apart from one another.
6. Time sent forth the existent: within Time the sun shines; within Time are all those things that come to be; within Time the eye sees widely.
7. Within Time is thought, within Time is breath, within Time is name centered. Through Time, when it has come, all these living beings find joy.
8. Within Time is heat, within Time is the foremost, within Time is the sacred truth centered. Time is the master of all, he who was the father of the Lord of Living Beings (Prajāpati).
9. Sent by it, born by it, and on it that was based. Becoming the sacred truth, Time bears that which stands at the highest.
10. Time sent forth the living beings, and in the beginning, Time (sent forth) the Lord of Living Beings. The self-existent Kaśyapa was born from Time; heat was born from Time.
1. From Time the waters arose; from Time the sacred truth, heat, and the directions. By Time the sun arises, and in Time it goes down again.
2. By Time the wind blows. By Time the great earth, and in Time the great heaven is set in place.
3. (Although) their son, Time long ago gave birth to what has been and what will be. From Time the verses of the Ṛg-veda arose; from Time, the recitation of the Yajur Veda was born.
4. Time gave rise to the sacrifice, the inexhaustible portion for the gods. Within Time, the male and female celestials (Gandharvas and Apsarasas), within Time the worlds find their foundations.
5. Upon Time this divine Singer (Aṅgiras) here and this Fire Priest (Atharvan) both stand. Both this world here and the highest world beyond, both the worlds won by merit and the boundaries won by merit—
6. Conquering all these worlds by means of the sacred truth, Time then races on, (for it is) the highest deity.
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Atharvaveda 19.53–54. Translated by Joel Brereton (n.p.).