Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 4, Brahmana 5. Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi, again
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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.
The conch
As, when a conch is being blown, one cannot grasp the sounds as they go outward, but by grasping the conch, or the blower of the conch, the sound is grasped:
Just as, when a conch is being blown, you cannot catch the separate sounds as they go out; but by taking hold of the conch itself, or of the one blowing it, the sound is caught. Again the particular sounds are held only in their source.
In the commentaries
Sankara repeats the lesson with the conch: the outgoing sounds are grasped only through their source, teaching that the manifold is known only in and as the underlying Self.