Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.13.42

samsthāpayainām jagatām sa-tasthushām

lokāya patnīm asi mātaram pitā

vidhema cāsyai namasā saha tvayā

yasyām sva-tejo 'gnim ivāranāv adhāh

SYNONYMS

samsthāpaya enām — raise this earth; jagatām — both the moving and; sa-tasthushām — nonmoving; lokāya — for their residence; patnīm — wife; asi — You are; mātaram — the mother; pitā — the father; vidhema — do we offer; ca — also; asyai — unto the mother; namasā — with all obeisances; saha — along with; tvayā — with You; yasyām — in whom; sva-tejah — by Your own potency; agnim — fire; iva — likened; aranau — in the arani wood; adhāh — invested.

TRANSLATION

O Lord, for the residential purposes of all inhabitants, both moving and nonmoving, this earth is Your wife, and You are the supreme father. We offer our respectful obeisances unto You, along with mother earth, in whom You have invested Your own potency, just as an expert sacrificer puts fire in the arani wood.

PURPORT

The so-called law of gravitation which sustains the planets is described herein as the potency of the Lord. This potency is invested by the Lord in the way that an expert sacrificial brāhmana puts fire in the arani wood by the potency of Vedic mantras. By this arrangement the world becomes habitable for both the moving and nonmoving creatures. The conditioned souls, who are residents of the material world, are put in the womb of mother earth in the same way the seed of a child is put by the father in the womb of the mother. This conception of the Lord and the earth as father and mother is explained in Bhagavad-gītā (14.4). Conditioned souls are devoted to the motherland in which they take their birth, but they do not know their father. The mother is not independent in producing children. Similarly, material nature cannot produce living creatures unless in contact with the supreme father, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam teaches us to offer obeisances unto the mother along with the Father, the Supreme Lord, because it is the Father only who impregnates the mother with all energies for the sustenance and maintenance of all living beings, both moving and nonmoving.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness