ॐ ब्रह्मवादिनो वदन्ति प्रथमो ऽध्यायः किंकारणं ब्रह्म कुतः स्म जाता जीवामः केन क्व च संप्रतिष्ठाः । अधिष्ठिताः केन सुखेतरेषु वर्तामहे ब्रह्मविदो व्यवस्थाम्
oṃ brahmavādino vadanti prathamo 'dhyāyaḥ kiṃkāraṇaṃ brahma kutaḥ sma jātā jīvāmaḥ kena kva ca saṃpratiṣṭhāḥ / adhiṣṭhitāḥ kena sukhetareṣu vartāmahe brahmavido vyavasthām
Devanagari rendered by HREEM from the edition's roman (IAST) text; the IAST is the edition's own.
The Brahma-students say: Is Brahman the cause? Whence are we born? Whereby do we live, and whither do we go? O ye who know Brahman, (tell us) at whose command we abide, whether in pain or in pleasure? Thus in the very first verse of the.SVetarvatara-upanishad, I think we ought to read sampratish/M/i, instead of sampratish//dtaA In the commentary the reading is right. Vyavasyam is a misprint for vyavastham. In the second verse we must separate kala h and svabhavaA Yad rikkhz,, no very unusual word, meaning chance, was formerly taken for a name of the moon! Instead of na tvatma- bMv&t, both sense and metre require that we should read anatmabhavat, though the commentators take a different view. They say, because there is a self, and then go on to say that even that would not suffice. Such matters, however, belong to a critical commentary on the Upanishads rather than to a translation, and I can refer to them in cases of absolute necessity only, and where the readings of the two MSS., A. and B, seem to offer some help. 232 svetAs vatara-upanishad.
Translated by F. Max MüllerFrom an unproofread scan of the printed edition; spelling and line breaks may carry OCR errors.