Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 3, Brahmana 8. Gargi again: the imperishable, the aksara
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
At its command all stands in place
Under the rule of this Imperishable, O Gargi, the sun and moon are held apart in their places. Under the rule of this Imperishable, O Gargi, heaven and earth are held apart in their places. Under the rule of this Imperishable, O Gargi, moments, hours, days and nights, fortnights, months, seasons, and years are held apart in their places. Under the rule of this Imperishable, O Gargi, some rivers flow eastward from the white mountains, others westward, each in its own direction. Under the rule of this Imperishable, O Gargi, men praise the giver, the gods depend on the sacrificer, and the fathers on the offering.
Yajnavalkya shows the Imperishable as the one ruler whose command (prasasana) holds the whole order in place: sun and moon stand fixed in their courses, heaven and earth stay apart, and the divisions of time, the moment (nimesa), the hour, days and nights, fortnights, months, seasons, years, all hold their stations; the rivers run their set ways, some east, some west from the snowy mountains; and the human and sacred orders keep their bonds, men praising the giver, gods sustained by the sacrificer, the ancestors by the offering (darvi, the offering-ladle).
In the commentaries
Under the mighty rule of this Imperishable, sun and moon are held apart, heaven and earth keep their places, the moments and hours and days and the seasons and years stand each in its station, the rivers run east and west from the white mountains and do not stray. Sankara takes the steadiness of the cosmos as a proof of the conscious Ruler. The sun is powerful, yet it does not overstep its hour; heaven and earth are a compound, liable to fall apart, yet they hold; time is kept as an appointed accountant keeps the reckoning, each item in its column. Such unfailing order, where powerful things obey a fixed measure, is not self-explained; it points beyond itself to a sovereign whose command is the boundary wall preserving every distinction. The Imperishable governs not by acting but by simply being That under which all stands.