निदिध्यासन Nididhyāsana · AbsorbStep 1 of 5
Nāsadīya Sūkta · Ṛgveda 10.129
A reading of the hymn
A narrated, verse-by-verse reflection on what the hymn is saying.
Introduction
The Nāsadīya Sūkta, the Hymn of Creation, is the one hundred and twenty-ninth hymn of the tenth maṇḍala of the Ṛgveda. In seven verses it asks how the world came to be, and it ends not with an answer but with a question. You will hear each verse chanted in Sanskrit, followed by an English translation and a short reflection on its meaning.
Verse 1 · Neither being nor non-being
nāsad āsīn no sad āsīt tadānīṃ nāsīd rajo no vyomā paro yat …
The hymn begins by taking everything away, even non-being. Neither 'it was' nor 'it was not' can describe the beginning. Then the air goes, and the sky beyond it. What remains is a string of questions: what covered it, where, and in whose keeping? That last question carries a quiet hope that some power was watching over it, though the rishi does not claim to know. And the word for the deep water, ambhas, echoes amba, mother, as if even in the void the poet reaches for something warm.
Verse 2 · No night, no day
na mṛtyur āsīd amṛtaṃ na tarhi na rātryā ahna āsīt praketaḥ …
Now time itself is removed. There is no death and no deathlessness, and nothing to tell night from day. Without difference, light from dark, this from that, there is nothing to know at all. Yet here comes the hymn's first positive statement: that One breathed, without wind, by its own power. Breath is prāṇa, the sign of life, and it points to ātman, the Self. So the beginning is not inert matter. It is alive, and nothing outside it sets it moving.
Verse 3 · Darkness hidden in darkness
tama āsīt tamasā gūḷham agre 'praketaṃ salilaṃ sarvam ā idam …
Darkness hidden in darkness, a darkness that cannot even see itself. The One does not yet know itself. And then, for the first time, something is born. The verbs change: until now the hymn has only described a state, and now there is an event. The One comes forth through tapas, heat. In later Indian thought tapas is the inner heat of the yogi's concentration. So the universe begins the way understanding begins in a person: with a turning inward, and a fire.
Verse 4 · The first seed of mind
kāmas tad agre sam avartatādhi manaso retaḥ prathamaṃ yad āsīt …
The first thing to stir is kāma, desire, and the hymn calls it the first seed of mind. Before there is thought, there is wanting. Then the seers, the kavis, search within their hearts, and there they find the bond, the bandhu, that ties being to non-being. In Indian thought the heart is where knowing happens. And bandhu becomes a lasting idea: hidden links between the person and the cosmos, so that to look deep within is also to look at the origin of things.
Verse 5 · A cord stretched across
tiraścīno vitato raśmir eṣām adhaḥ svid āsīd upari svid āsīt …
A cord is stretched across. The word raśmi can mean a cord, a ray of light, or the reins of a chariot. As it stretches, there is suddenly an across, a below and an above: space opens. The drawn-out vowel in the Sanskrit, marked by a small three, is the rishi stretching his own question. Below are the bearers of seed, above the great powers; below is own-power, above is impulse. Creation appears not as one force acting alone, but as a partnership.
Verse 6 · The gods came later
ko addhā veda ka iha pra vocat kuta ājātā kuta iyaṃ visṛṣṭiḥ …
Who really knows? Who here, on this earth, can say where it came from? The gods came after creation, so they cannot tell us either. The Upaniṣads read the gods as the senses: fire as speech, the sun as sight, the wind as breath. Read that way, the verse says that our senses arrived after creation, and cannot see back to its source. Whatever we are looking for lies behind the very tools we use to look.
Verse 7 · Or perhaps he does not know
iyaṃ visṛṣṭir yata ābabhūva yadi vā dadhe yadi vā na …
Did someone set this world in place, or did no one? Is there any order that holds it together? The overseer in the highest heaven surely knows. And then the last words: yadi vā na veda. Or perhaps he does not know. There is no anger in this, and no despair. It is simple honesty, reached by thinking as far as thought can go. And it is not a closed door, but an invitation to keep looking.
Closing
That is the Nāsadīya Sūkta. Seven verses that move from not knowing, to wanting to know, to asking. Some three thousand years later, cosmology traced the universe back to a hot, dense beginning, nearly fourteen billion years ago. But the deepest parallel is not in the details. As physics approaches the first moment, its equations stop giving answers, and physicists say plainly that they do not know what came before, or whether 'before' even makes sense. The rishi was not doing physics. But he ended where good science ends: at the edge of what can be known, honest about it, and still asking. Or perhaps he does not know.
Tap any word to jump there. Tap a Sanskrit word to see its meaning. Space plays and pauses.