ऋत ṛta
The order that things run by — the turning of seasons, the truth of a spoken vow, the rightness of an action. One word for all three, which is an argument in itself: the cosmos and the moral life are held to be the same fabric.
Ṛgveda · Maṇḍala X · Sūkta 129 · seven verses
नासदीय सूक्त
The Hymn of Creation
The oldest cosmology we have does not end in an answer.
It ends by admitting that nobody is in a position to give one.
नासदासीन्नो सदासीत्तदानीं
नासीद्रजो नो व्योमा परो यत् ।
किमावरीवः कुह कस्य शर्मन्
नम्भः किमासीद्गहनं गभीरम् ॥
nāsad āsīn no sad āsīt tadānīṁ · nāsīd rajo no vyomā paro yat
kim āvarīvaḥ kuha kasya śarman · ambhaḥ kim āsīd gahanaṁ gabhīram
Then there was neither non-existence nor existence. There was no air, and no sky beyond it. What stirred? Where? In whose keeping? Was there water, bottomlessly deep?
The negation comes first Not nothing, which would already be something. The hymn refuses both terms of the pair before it will describe anything at all.
न मृत्युरासीदमृतं न तर्हि
न रात्र्या अह्न आसीत्प्रकेतः ।
आनीदवातं स्वधया तदेकं
तस्माद्धान्यन्न परः किं चनास ॥
na mṛtyur āsīd amṛtaṁ na tarhi · na rātryā ahna āsīt praketaḥ
ānīd avātaṁ svadhayā tad ekaṁ · tasmād dhānyan na paraḥ kiṁ canāsa
There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no sign of night, nor of day. That One breathed, windless, by its own power. Other than that there was nothing at all.
ānīd avātaṁ — breathed, windless A breath with no air to breathe. The paradox is deliberate: the text is describing activity before any of the conditions for activity existed.
तम आसीत्तमसा गूळ्हमग्रे
ऽप्रकेतं सलिलं सर्वमा इदम् ।
तुच्छ्येनाभ्वपिहितं यदासीत्
तपसस्तन्महिनाजायतैकम् ॥
tama āsīt tamasā gūḷham agre · ’praketaṁ salilaṁ sarvam ā idam
tucchyenābhv apihitaṁ yad āsīt · tapasas tan mahinājāyataikam
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning; all this was an unmarked flood. What lay covered by the void — That One — was born by the power of heat.
tapas Heat, and also the heat of concentrated effort. The same word later means ascetic discipline. Creation and self-discipline are given the same root.
कामस्तदग्रे समवर्तताधि
Desire came upon that One in the beginning
— the first movement in the hymn is not a god, and not a word. It is wanting.
कामस्तदग्रे समवर्तताधि
मनसो रेतः प्रथमं यदासीत् ।
सतो बन्धुमसति निरविन्दन्
हृदि प्रतीष्या कवयो मनीषा ॥
kāmas tad agre samavartatādhi · manaso retaḥ prathamaṁ yad āsīt
sato bandhum asati nir avindan · hṛdi pratīṣyā kavayo manīṣā
Desire came upon that One in the beginning; it was the first seed of mind. Poets, searching in their hearts with wisdom, found the bond of existence in non-existence.
kavayaḥ — the poets Not priests and not gods. The ones who work the problem here are makers of verse, and the instrument they use is the heart, examined.
तिरश्चीनो विततो रश्मिरेषाम्
अधः स्विदासी३दुपरि स्विदासी३त् ।
रेतोधा आसन्महिमान आसन्
स्वधा अवस्तात्प्रयतिः परस्तात् ॥
tiraścīno vitato raśmir eṣām · adhaḥ svid āsī3d upari svid āsī3t
retodhā āsan mahimāna āsan · svadhā avastāt prayatiḥ parastāt
Their cord was stretched across. Was there below? Was there above? There were seed-placers, there were powers: self-sustenance below, impulse above.
The measuring line raśmi is a ray, and also the cord a builder stretches to set out a plan. The first structure in the universe is a line drawn to divide it.
को अद्धा वेद क इह प्र वोचत्
कुत आजाता कुत इयं विसृष्टिः ।
अर्वाग्देवा अस्य विसर्जनेन
अथा को वेद यत आबभूव ॥
ko addhā veda ka iha pra vocat · kuta ājātā kuta iyaṁ visṛṣṭiḥ
arvāg devā asya visarjanena · athā ko veda yata ābabhūva
Who really knows? Who here can say? When was it born, and from where did this creation come? The gods are later than this world’s making — so who knows where it arose?
arvāg devāḥ — the gods came after The single most radical line in the hymn. It removes divine testimony from the evidence, on the grounds that the witnesses were not there.
इयं विसृष्टिर्यत आबभूव
यदि वा दधे यदि वा न ।
यो अस्याध्यक्षः परमे व्योमन्
त्सो अङ्ग वेद यदि वा न वेद ॥
iyaṁ visṛṣṭir yata ābabhūva · yadi vā dadhe yadi vā na
yo asyādhyakṣaḥ parame vyoman · so aṅga veda yadi vā na veda
Whence this creation has arisen — whether it formed itself, or whether it did not — the one who watches over it from the highest heaven, he knows. Or perhaps he does not know.
yadi vā na veda Three words that undo the six verses above them. Not humility as an ornament at the end of a confident text; the doubt is the conclusion.
Why a text like this survives
Creation stories are usually load-bearing. They exist to authorise something — a king, a caste, a calendar — and a story that ends in perhaps nobody knows authorises nothing at all.
This one was kept anyway, memorised syllable by syllable across three thousand years by people who could have quietly dropped it. What they preserved is a method rather than a doctrine: state the question precisely, follow it as far as it goes, and then refuse to fill the remaining gap with a name.
The Upaniṣads take the same move and make it a technique — नेति नेति, neti neti, “not this, not this” — approaching what is real by removing everything it is not.
Three ideas the hymn sits inside
गुण guṇa
Three strands in everything that exists. Tamas, inertia and dark; rajas, motion and heat; sattva, clarity. Nothing is made of one. What changes between a stone and a thought is only the proportion.
माया māyā
Usually translated “illusion”, which is too weak. Closer to art, or the power that makes appearances. Not a lie about what is there, but the fact that what is there arrives already formed into shapes.
यदि वा न वेद
or perhaps he does not know