Who knows from whence this great
The Creation in Rig
Veda 10:129
The Paradox of Origine
Few cultures are as impenetrably
complex as that of India. This is
evident also in its ancient sources to
ideas of the creation of the world.
In Rig Veda, the collection of hymns
from around 1500 to 800 BCE, the poet
of one of them contemplates the very
question if something can be first, i.e.
if there can have been a creation at all.
Rig Veda 10:129 is in a famous hymn
of the tenth mandala. It is generally
regarded as one of the later hymns,
probably composed in the 9th century
BCE. It has the Indian name Nasadiya
Sukta, "Not the Non-existen", and is often
given the English title Creation, because
of its subject.
The Paradox of Origin
The advanced abstract reasoning
in the hymn has brought it a lot of
attention, not only within indology, but
from scholars of philosophy and the
history of religion as well. Its line of
thought relates splendidly to
cosmological thinking of the philosophers
of Ancient Greece, all through to present
day astronomy.
And it ends with what seems like a
punch line, a paradox taken to the
extreme, almost as if the unknown poet
of it was making a joke. Here are the last
lines of it (in Max Müller's translation):
creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation
came.
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High seer that is in highest
heaven,
He knows it - or perchance even He
knows not.
Mainly, Rig Veda 10:129 reveals an
insoluble paradox in which the human
mind of the past as well as the present
easily gets trapped: How can the
universe have sprung into existence, i.e.
how can something come out of
nothing? How can there be a beginning,
before which there was nothing?
Much of what puzzled people three
thousand years ago, still puzzles us
today. This dilemma, too. Present-day
scientists wrestle with the paradox,
speculating about multiverses and such
in an effort to explain the something out
of nothing. Doing so, they might just
move the problem to another location,
not solving it at all.
So, we should be wary of taking for
granted that our ancestors were
intellectually inferior to us. We have
more facts, but they knew what we still
would not know today, nor tomorrow.
That's what this Creation hymn of
Rig Veda points out.