NASADIYA SUKTA OF THE RIGVEDA.

 

The Nasadiya Sukta or the Hymn of Creation belongs to the 10th mandala in the 129th verse of the Rigveda. Nasadiya Sukta is also known as the verse to the source of creation.

There are remarkable questions in the verse. It is highly sceptical and it soliloquises on creation and the creator. If we understand the meaning of this Sukta, then its roots contain theism, atheism, polytheism and pantheism. It is challenges as to whether the creator who is the Brahman itself knows or does not know from where all creation came from. See the translation of the sukta below.

The Nasadiya Sukta or the Hymn of Creation is the 129^th hymn of the 10^th mandala of the Rigveda. 10.129. It goes like this:

1.   Then even non-existence was not there, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the space beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping was it?
Was there then the cosmic fluid, in depths unfathomed?

2. Then there was neither death nor immortality
nor was there then the torch of night and day.
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.

3. At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only un-illumined cosmic water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of knowledge.

4. In the beginning desire descended on it -
that was the primal seed, born of the mind.
The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
know that which is, is kin to that which is not.

5. And they have stretched their cord across the void,
and know what was above, and what below.
Seminal powers made fertile by mighty forces.
Below was strength, and over it was impulse.

6. But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
the Gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

7. Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from the highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.