भागवत-पुराण Reading

Bhg. 1.8.16:
mā maḿsthā hy etad āścaryaḿ/ sarvāścaryamaye 'cyute |
ya idaḿ māyayā devyā/ sṛjaty avati hanty ajaḥ ||

In order to render a precise reading, saving time and avoiding mistakes as well, we should do it starting from the verb. In fact, reading a Sanskrit text means morphosyntax fashion reading, but as the student gets experienced, he/she can do it faster. Fortunately, we have four verbs here to make our lives easier. Since the order hardly corresponds with English word order, we will start from the second line (second verse).
Well, it's always better that we start our reading from a finite verb. Here it comes, sṛjati, avati, and hanti, or sṛjati (3rd. p.sing. a. pres. ind. √sṛj "to emit"); avati (3rd. p.sing. a. pres. ind.√av "to drive, impel"); and (3rd. p.sing. a. pres. ind. √han "to kill"). Now, it's time to really start. Someone emits or "creates", drives or "maintains", and kill or "destroys". Who? ya (yas) (nom. sing. m. ya "who"), and this ya, being in the nominative case, is the same as ajaḥ (nom. sing. m. a-ja "not born"). Therefore, ya idaḿ sṛjaty avati hanty ajaḥ, "[he], the unborn, who creates, maintains and destroys this". How does he "kill this" ? through māyā devi, or māyayā devyā (instr. sing. f. māyā devi). So we may say the second line is somehow ready: "[he] the one who is unborn, through His Mayadevi creates, maintains, and destroys this". Now comes the first line.
Again we start from the finite verb (when we have one!) . Our finite verb is the maḿsthā (when we have a mā, "do not" (as in mā maḿsthā), a prohibitive particle, we also may expect a verb in a non-indicative mood. So we have the injunctive . Morphologically, the injunctive behaves like an aorist [1], but syntatically, we may consider it an imperactive. So, mā maḿsthā, "Ye should not think". Should not think what? hy etad āścaryam, "indeed, this is astonishing"[2]. Astonishing regarding sarvāścaryamaye 'cyute, "the one who is made of all astonishing things" and is 'cyute, "infallible" [3].

So we can consider the stanza is ready to read.
"Ye should not think that this is astonishing regarding the one who is made of all astonishing things, and is infallible. He is the one who creates, maintains, and destroys this world."

below follow the steps one may take in order to read the stanza with exactness:
1 [mā maḿsthā] hy 2[etad āścaryam]́/ 3[sarvāścaryamaye 'cyute] |
ya 5 [idaḿ] 6 [māyayā devyā]/ 4 [sṛjaty avati hanty] ajaḥ ||

1. An a-orist (a word borrowed from Greek language), "not fixed", or the punctual aspect, refers to an action performed in a not fixed time, which registers the action in the very moment it is performed. When? We don't know, but the action is being performed "right now". However, this verbal tense has been related to past tense due its use in narratives. Ultimately it works like a generalized past tense. The sanskrit adyatanI, "performed during the day", or "recently", behaves like the Greek aorist.
2. We infer the presence of a copulative verb when we have duplicated cases as we have here (double accusative in etad [is] āścaryam).
3. The average use of the locative case is to indicate where an action takes place. For example, we have the word vana, "forest", and vane, which means "in the forest". However, there is a special use of locative which is called absolute locative. This is almost like a dative, and we can translate it is as "regarding, toward, etc."

Thank you. See you later. Hari bol!