Text 4
sa ātmany utthitam manyum
ātmajāyātmanā prabhuḥ
aśīśamad yathā vahniṁ
sva-yonyā vāriṇātma-bhūḥ
saḥ — he; ātmani — within himself; utthitam — risen; manyum — anger; ātma-jāya — toward his son; ātmanā — by his own intelligence; prabhuḥ — the lord; aśīśamat — subdued; yathā — just as; vahnim — fire; sva — itself; yonyā — whose origin; vāriṇā — by water; ātma-bhūḥ — self-born Brahmā.
Though anger toward his son was now rising within his heart, Lord Brahmā was able to subdue it by applying his intelligence, in the same way that fire is extinguished by its own product, water.
Lord Brahmā is sometimes affected by his contact with the mode of passion. But because he is ādi-kavi, the firstborn and foremost learned scholar in the universe, when anger begins to disturb his mind he can control it by means of discriminating self-examination. In this instance he reminded himself that Bhṛgu was his son. Thus in this verse Śukadeva Gosvāmī draws the analogy that Brahmā’s own expansion (his son) served to put out his anger just as water, which originally evolved from elemental fire in the primeval creation, puts out a fire.