Devalok
Origin · 2 tellings · Pan-India

The hymn of creation: neither being nor not-being

Who is in it

  • Prajapati not named; read into the hymn by later teachers

Texts: Rigveda

The story, beat by beat

  1. There was neither the non-existent nor the existent, no air and no sky.
  2. Neither death nor deathlessness, nor night and day; the One breathed without breath by itself.
  3. Darkness hidden in darkness; the One was born by the power of heat.
  4. Desire arose first, the first seed of mind; sages found the bond of being in not-being.
  5. Who knows whence this creation came? The gods are later than it.
  6. He who looks on it from the highest heaven knows, or perhaps he does not know.

creation doubt desire question

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Rigveda 10.129

Pan-India All traditions

Seven verses that describe the state before creation by negations, a single One breathing by its own nature, heat, then desire as the first seed of mind, and end with open questions: the gods came afterwards, so who can say; the overseer in the highest heaven knows, or perhaps does not.

Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer § 10.129

Scholarly

Taittiriya Aranyaka 1.23 (quotation)

Pan-India All traditions

The Aranyaka's creation story has desire arise in Prajapati's mind on the lotus leaf and quotes the hymn's verse on desire as the first seed of mind in support.

What is different here:

The hymn's impersonal desire becomes Prajapati's own wish to create.

Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. 1 (2nd ed.), J. Muir § vol1.p32

Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. 1 (2nd ed.), J. Muir

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