This morning, walking to work, I had a strong desire to listen to one of my favorite hymns from the Rigveda – the Nasadiya Sukta. The Rigveda is a vast reservoir of treasures where one hymn triumphs the other in terms of poetic magnificence, its message and holding you in its grasp while everything else moves on, but the Nasadiya Sukta is special. Most hymns are for earth, wind, fire, various Gods but the Nasadiya Sukta is about cosmology and creation.
It’s a simple chant that shows how the early man expressed his doubts of the age-long question haunting mankind – where did we come from? Who is the creator of this universe? The questions might seem simple – generations of humans since have asked them to no avail – but it’s the author’s poetic brilliance that stands apart and threatens to completely overwhelm you.
We have all wondered what came first – the hen or the egg but to write it in a way that titillates your senses and make your hair stand on your skin, defying the laws of gravity, is indeed a feat. Not only does the author convince you the questions in the hymn are central to our existence but also puts into perspective how minute and irrelevant everything else is.
Like all Vedas and other religious texts written at the time, no one knows who wrote this hymn. With the emphasis placed on the art form no one, including the author, gave significance to the idea of fame and glory. Thousands of pieces of classic literature is rampant, even today, with no one sure of their author or its origin.
My first thought on hearing the Nasadiya Sukta was the Big Bang – the primordial way in which scientists believe our universe started. There is a lot of debate about this; the central question being how could something have come out of nothing? Quite appropriately the hymn starts with “Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where?”
It questions many things, many aspects of traditional beliefs – it tells you how there was something despite nothing but also questions how it came about. It renders the Gods helpless by simply stating they came after creation so they ought not to know anything; but also promulgates the belief of a grand master, a designer who brought about the world as we know it. Despite such ideas, it stands unconvinced, the author unable to conclude how and where things came from. The grand master may be the designer; maybe he knows how it all started but perhaps he doesn’t know either.
For me, the hymn is a paradox – it shows how even at that time there was struggle with the idea of creation. Its central message being people of that era believed there was something that created us but still couldn’t come around to accept it. For centuries since we are still struggling to understand where and how creation took place; if we are alone in the universe, if there is only one universe or a multitude of verses all with their own laws and perhaps their own unique set of creations. The language of the questions may have become complex as we learn more and more about the universe we inhabit but the basic message is identical – we may accept the idea of a grand designer or we may defy it. Either way, we are ignorant about how we came into existence. No matter how advanced our technology is, the answer to this basic question continues to elude us.
Nasadiya Sukta - 129th hymn of the 10th Mandala of the Rigveda
Translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith
Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminate chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart’s thought discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes into creation? The Gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
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