Sanskrit
वायुर्यमोऽग्निर्वरुणः शशाङ्कः प्रजापतिस्त्वं प्रपितामहश्च । नमो नमस्तेऽस्तु सहस्रकृत्वः पुनश्च भूयोऽपि नमो नमस्ते ॥
vāyur yamo'gnir varuṇaḥ śaśāṅkaḥ prajāpatis tvaṃ prapitāmahaś ca namo namas te'stu sahasrakṛtvaḥ punaś ca bhūyo'pi namo namaste
Translation
Thou art Vâyu and Yama, Agni, moon, Varuna, Father, Grandsire of all; Hail, hail to Thee! a thousand times all hail! Hail unto Thee! again, again all hail!
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
A second, more pointed one-upping of the Vedic pantheon: Krishna is not just Prajāpati, the traditional “grandsire” of beings, he is “prapitāmahaḥ,” the great-grandfather, a step further back than even the standard epithet for Brahmā allows. The verse’s second half abandons epithet-naming altogether for pure repetition — “namo namas te,” hail, hail to Thee, doubled and doubled again — and the shift itself is telling: once the vocabulary of comparison runs out, what’s left is not a stronger claim but a chant, praise turning into something closer to mantra than to argument.