भारतबीजBharatBeej नासदीय सूक्तNāsadīya Sūkta

Ṛgveda 10.129

नासदीय सूक्तNāsadīya Sūkta

The Hymn of Creation. Seven verses, three thousand years old, that ask how the universe began and end by admitting no one may know.

नासदासीन्नो सदासीत्तदानीं

nāsad āsīn no sad āsīt tadānīṃ

Then there was neither non-being nor being.

Begin with श्रवण · Sanskrit recitation →

Your path

Three stages, in order. Each page you open is ticked off here.

  1. श्रवण Śravaṇa · Hear

    Listen first. Let the sound of the verses reach you before their meaning does. Follow the words as they light up, and don't worry yet about understanding.

    1. Sanskrit recitation
    2. Chant with meaning
  2. मनन Manana · Reflect

    Now take it apart. Go verse by verse and word by word: what each word means, how the sentence turns, what the poet is asking.

    1. Where it comes from
    2. Verses
    3. १
    4. २
    5. ३
    6. ४
    7. ५
    8. ६
    9. ७
    10. Key words
  3. निदिध्यासन Nididhyāsana · Absorb

    Let it settle. Hear the ideas behind the verses, sit with their questions, and see what has stayed with you.

    1. A reading of the hymn
    2. The hymn and the Big Bang
    3. Echoes in later texts
    4. Questions to sit with
    5. Check your understanding

What it is

The Nāsadīya Sūkta is a short hymn of seven verses in the Ṛgveda, the oldest of the four Vedas. Its name comes from its opening words, nāsad āsīt, “there was not non-being.” In English it is usually called the Hymn of Creation.

Most creation stories tell you what happened. This one asks. It strips away everything we could use to describe a beginning (being, non-being, air, sky, death, night and day) and then, carefully, lets a few things appear: a breathing One, heat, desire, the first seed of mind. And at the end it turns its own question back on itself: perhaps even the one who watches over creation does not know how it came to be.

Where it comes from

It is hymn 129 of the tenth maṇḍala (book) of the Ṛgveda, written Ṛgveda 10.129. The tenth maṇḍala is generally held to be the youngest layer of the Ṛgveda, and contains several of its most philosophical hymns. Dates for the Ṛgveda are debated, but this layer is commonly placed around the end of the second millennium BCE.

Like every Vedic hymn it was composed and passed down orally, memorised syllable by syllable for millennia before it was written down. The traditional index names its seer (ṛṣi) as Prajāpati Parameṣṭhin, its subject (devatā) as Bhāvavṛtta, “the course of becoming,” and its metre as triṣṭubh, four lines of eleven syllables.

What it deals with

  • The beginning before beginnings. What was there when there was not yet anything, not even nothing?
  • How difference appears. From a signless, undivided state, how do this and that, below and above, come to be?
  • The source of mind. The hymn places desire before thought, and finds the bond between being and non-being in the human heart.
  • The limits of knowing. Who could know how it all began, if even the gods came afterwards?

How to use this course

The course follows the three steps of learning named in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (2.4.5): śravaṇa, manana, nididhyāsana, hearing, reflecting, and absorbing.

  • Śravaṇa (hear). Listen to the hymn chanted in Sanskrit, each word lighting up as it is sung, then hear it again with its meaning.
  • Manana (reflect). Learn where it comes from, then go verse by verse, where every word is broken out with its meaning, and gather the key words.
  • Nididhyāsana (absorb). Hear a narrated reading of the whole hymn, see how it sits beside modern cosmology and later Indian thought, sit with its questions, and check what has stayed with you.

Go in order the first time. Each page you open is ticked off, so you can always pick up where you left off.

Key understandings

  1. Before the categories

    The hymn starts before being and non-being, before air, sky, death or time. It refuses to describe the beginning with any word we already have.

  2. The beginning was alive

    Its first positive claim is that “That One breathed, windless, by its own power.” Whatever was there was alive, and moved by nothing outside itself.

  3. Heat, then desire, then mind

    The One is born through tapas, heat. Then kāma, desire, arises: “the first seed of mind.” Wanting comes before thinking.

  4. The answer is sought within

    The seers find the bond between being and non-being by searching in their hearts. Inner inquiry is treated as a way of knowing the cosmos.

  5. Even the gods came later

    The gods arrived after creation, so they cannot report on it. Nothing inside the world can see back to its source.

  6. It ends in honest doubt

    The overseer in the highest heaven surely knows, “or perhaps he does not know.” The hymn closes with a question, not a creed.