AND FINALLY – CREATION HYMN
FROM THE RIG VEDA
Neither being nor Non-being existed then;
Neither was there air, nor the heavens beyond.
What breathed? Where? In whose care?
Was water there, unfathomably deep?
There was neither death nor immortality then;
Of night and day, there was no sign.
The One breathed, without breath,
By Its own impulse:
Besides It, nothing else existed.
Darkness was wrapped in darkness then:
All was one unruffled sea.
Then the One, hidden in void, stirred, came forth:
Through fervour, came to be.
A desire came upon the One in the beginning:
The primal seed of mind.
Seers, seeking with wisdom within themselves,
Found the link between being and Non-being.
A line distinguished the one from the other –
What was below? What above?
There were seed-sources,
There were generative powers:
There was impulse from beneath,
There was giving birth above.
Who really knows? Who can tell the tale?
How did it all arise? Whence this creation?
Even the gods came later, after it was formed.
Who, then, can tell how it has come to be?
None knows whence this creation has arisen –
Whether He made it or whether He has not –
He who surveys it from the highest heaven:
Only He knows; or maybe He does not….