The God Called Who

Most hymns of the Rigveda know whom they are calling. They name Indra, or Agni, or the Dawn, in the very first line. One hymn in the tenth book does something else. It praises a god for nine verses, and at the end of every verse it stops and asks who he is.

It begins before there was anything to see.

"In the beginning the Golden Embryo arose," the poet sings. "The moment he was born he was the one lord of all that exists. He set this earth in its place, and this sky. Who is the god we should honour with our offering?"

The question is a practical one. An offering has to be given to somebody. The poet knows what this god has done, and he keeps the name back.

So he goes on, and tells what he knows.

"He gives breath, and he gives strength. All the gods wait on his command. He is lord of death, and his shadow is life without death. Who is the god we should honour with our offering?"

"By his own greatness he became the one king of everything that breathes and everything that sleeps. He is lord of men and lord of cattle. Who is the god we should honour with our offering?"

Then the poet looks around him. The snowy mountains belong to this god, he says. The sea is his, and so is the far river Rasa that people speak of. The quarters of the sky are his two arms.

"Through him the sky is strong and the earth stands firm. He propped up the vault of light, and he measured out the air between. Who is the god we should honour with our offering?"

From the mountains the hymn turns to people. Two armies stand facing each other, drawn up for battle, and their hearts are shaking. Both of them look to this god for help while the risen sun shines down on them.

Then the hymn goes back further than it began, to the water.

"When the great waters came, carrying the seed of everything and giving birth to fire, he arose from them, the one life of the gods. He looked out in his strength over those waters, which held all power and brought forth the sacrifice. He is the god above the gods, and there is no other beside him. Who is the god we should honour with our offering?"

The ninth verse is closer to a prayer than to praise.

"May he do us no harm, he who fathered the earth, whose laws hold true, who made the sky and brought forth the great shining waters. Who is the god we should honour with our offering?"

Nine times the question has been asked. In the tenth verse the refrain is gone. The poet turns and speaks to the god himself, and at last there is a name.

"Prajapati! You alone hold all these created things in your arms, and no one else does. Grant us what we long for when we call on you. May we be masters of wealth."

Prajapati means the lord of creatures, the lord of all that is born. That is the whole of the answer the hymn gives. The one who arose first, who holds the sky up and looked out over the first waters, is the lord of everything born after him.

You may wonder how a golden embryo came to be in the waters, and who put it there. The hymn does not say. It was left to later teachers to tell that part as a story.

In the beginning, the Brahmana says, there was only water, a sea and nothing else.

The waters wished for something. "How can we bring forth?" they asked. They toiled and grew hot with the effort, and as they heated, a golden egg appeared.

There was no such thing as a year yet. But the golden egg floated on the water for as long as a year lasts, and at the end of that time a man was born from it. This was Prajapati.

He broke the egg open. There was nowhere for him to stand, for nothing existed but the water. So the golden shell carried him, drifting, for as long again.

When that second year was over, he tried to speak.

"Bhuh," he said. That word became the earth.

"Bhuvah," he said. That became the air.

"Svah," he said. That became the sky.

The teachers of the Brahmana were pleased with this, because they saw it in every house. A child, they say, tries to speak when it is a year old, for that is when Prajapati tried. A child begins with words of one sound and two, as he did. And a child pulls itself up to stand at about a year, because at the end of that year Prajapati stood up on the worlds he had just spoken.

Those three words have five syllables between them. He made them into the five seasons.

He had been born with a thousand years to live. The Brahmana says he could see the end of his own life from where he stood, the way a man sees the far bank of a river.

He wanted children. He went on singing and toiling, and with the breath of his mouth he made the gods. They went up into the sky, and when he had made them it was like daylight for him. With his downward breath he made the Asuras. They went into the earth, and when he had made them it was like darkness.

"I have made trouble for myself," he thought, "since darkness has come over me with these."

Out of that daylight he made the day, and out of that darkness he made the night.

Then he looked at the round of days and seasons he had brought about, and saw that it was a likeness of himself. That is why, the teachers say, Prajapati is the year.