Sanskrit
कस्माच्च ते न नमेरन्महात्मन् गरीयसे ब्रह्मणोऽप्यादिकर्त्रे । अनन्त देवेश जगन्निवास त्वमक्षरं सदसत्तत्परं यत् ॥
kasmāc ca te na nameran mahātman garīyase brahmaṇo'py ādikartre ananta deveśa jagannivāsa tvam akṣaraṃ sad asat tat paraṃ yat
Translation
How should they otherwise, O loftiest Self! First Cause! Brahmâ Himself less great than Thou. Infinite, God of Gods, home of all worlds, Unperishing, Sat, Asat, That supreme!
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The rhetorical question — how could they not bow — turns praise into argument, and the argument reaches for the oldest available vocabulary: “sad asat,” being and non-being, is the same polarity the Rig Veda’s creation hymns use to describe the state before existence itself. Placing Krishna beyond that pairing (“tat paraṃ,” That which is beyond) is a stronger claim than calling him a creator; it puts him prior to the categories creation and non-creation would even need. Ranking him above Brahmā, the creator-god who was merely one more figure catalogued back in verse 15, keeps escalating a hierarchy this hymn has no intention of stopping until it runs out of gods to name.