438 Srimad-Bhagavatam [Canto 3, Ch. 11

world are the subject matter of sanakhya philosophy. The first sixteen diver-
sities are the eleven senses and five sense objects, and the eight elements are
the gross and subtle matter, namely earth, water, fire, air, sky, mind, intelli-
gence and ego. All these combined together are distributed throughout the
entire universe, which extends diametrically to four billion miles. Besides
this universe of our experience, there are innumerable other universes.
Some of them are bigger than the present one, and all of them are clustered
together under similar material elements as described below.

TEXT 41

SU De mC COMER CCIUCE
RATATAT HM MSTA: [1221

dasottaradhikair yatra
pravistah paramanuvat

laksyate’ntar-gatas canye
kotigo hy anda-rasayah

dasa-uttara-adhikaih—with ten times greater thickness; yatra—in which;
pravistah—entered; parama-anuvat—like atoms; laksyate—it (mass of uni-
verses) appears; antah-gatah—come together; ca—and; anye—in the other;
kotisah—clustered; hi—for; anda-rasayah—huge combination of universes.

TRANSLATION

The layers of elements covering the universes are each ten times thicker
than the one before, and all the universes clustered together appear like
atoms in a huge combination.

PURPORT

The coverings of the universes are also constituted of the elements earth,
water, fire, air and ether, and each is ten times thicker than the one before.
The first covering of the universe is earth, and it is ten times thicker than
the universe itself. If the universe is four billion miles in size, then the size
of the earthly covering of the universe is four billion times ten. The cov-
ering of water is ten times greater than the earthly covering, the covering
of fire is ten times greater than the watery covering, the covering of air is
ten times greater than that of the fire, the covering of ether is ten times
greater still than that of air, and so on. The universe within the coverings
of matter appears to be like an atom in comparison to the coverings, and
the number of universes is unknown even to those who can estimate the
coverings of the universes.
