RIG   VEDA

THE SONG OF CREATION

Then there was not non-existent nor existent: there was no
realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? was water
there, unfathomed depth of water?

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign
was there, the day's and night's divider.
That one thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart
from it was nothing whatsoever.

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness, this all was
undiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power
of warmth was born that unit.

Thereafter rose desire in the beginning, desire the primal seed
and germ of spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the
existent's kinship in the non-existent.

Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above
it then, and what below it?
there were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action
here and energy of yonder.

Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was
born and whence comes this creation?
The gods are later than this world's production.
Who knows, then, whence it first came into being?

He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all
or did not form it.
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily
knows it, or perhaps even he knows it not.