tantric metaseity in the rig veda’s “creation hymn”

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies March 2021: 21-52 DOI: 10.6240/concentric.lit.202103_47(1).0003

Tantric Metaseity in the Rig Veda’s “Creation Hymn”:

A Sarkarian Reading and New Translation of X.129

Justin M. Hewitson

Education Center for Humanities and Social Sciences

National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Abstract Western surveys of idealism have historically overlooked Indian sources as

scholars were unfamiliar with Indian metaphysics and lacked appropriate

exegetical translations of India’s ancient Sanskrit spiritual literature. But

millennia before the (Neo)Platonists conceived their idealist arguments, Indian

sages who meditated on causal consciousness produced esoteric teachings,

metaphorical descriptions of abstract states, and influential philosophical ideas

that shaped the ancient worldview of monistic idealism. Many Indologists argue

that the Vedic religion introduced by the prehistorical or ancient Aryan

migrants into northern India catalyzed the growth of later Hindu traditions that

regard Brahman (Metaseity) as the supreme ontological entity. However, P. R.

Sarkar tilts the origins of Indian idealism away from this monolithic Vedic

source with his polemical claim that indigenous Śiva Tantra initially existed

independently from Aryan Vedic beliefs and propitiatory rites. This essay

therefore interrogates the first ancient expression of metaphysics in India

through a new translation and reinterpretation of the Rg Veda’s canonical

“Creation Hymn,” mediated by Sarkar’s Tantric historiography and spiritual

metaphysics. By engaging with Sarkar’s emic claim for Tantra’s spiritual and

epistemic influences on Vedic thought, I reconstruct the Creation Hymn’s

influential monistic ontology to explain its radical departure from the Rg Veda’s

traditional sacerdotalism. It is proposed that monistic idealism likely originated

in India and that the Creation Hymn is the first textual evidence of this

philosophy infused with proto-Tantra.

Keywords

idealism, Tantra, Rig Veda, metaphysics, P. R. Sarkar, Creation Hymn, ontology,

cosmology, meditation, Indology

I opted to use the more commonly encountered Rig Veda instead of using the diacritic spelling

Rgveda in this title to improve online searches for the term.

22 Concentric 47.1 April 2021

Introduction

Metaphysical and naturalist explanations of ultimate causality have produced

variations of idealism and atomism in the twenty-three centuries since Plato’s eidos.

Western philosophers continue to develop idealist perspectives regarding ontology

and cosmology in opposition to materialist philosophies. Idealism substantively

informs the history of ideas, shaping philosophical, spiritual, and literary texts. Justin

Prystash states that its Romantic iteration “survived the ascendancy of analytic

philosophy in the early twentieth century” and that “[p]antheism, hylozoism,

Spinozism, animism, panpsychism, [and] vital materialism” are essentially idealist

because they do not distinguish between mind and objects (158-59). The authors of

Idealism: The History of a Philosophy also see idealism pervading the “history of

philosophy,” and it is once again at the heart of “mainstream philosophical problems”

(Dunham, Grant, and Watson 1). They further acknowledge that despite “enormous

and growing scholarly interest,” they lack the relevant background to include many

of its “varieties and history,” creating a need for other studies to establish the

philosophy’s core problems so “contemporary, historical and unacknowledged

idealisms can be coordinated within its general landscape” (2). Surveys of idealism

have tended to gloss over Indian sources as Western scholars either ignored Asian

commentary in general or lacked informed translations of ancient Indian spiritual

literature. Well before the (Neo)Platonists entertained idealist perspectives, Indian

sages who meditated on causal consciousness produced esoteric teachings,

metaphorical descriptions of abstract states, and profoundly introspective

philosophical reasoning. I follow this trail by comparatively analyzing the Indian

origins of monistic idealism in my translation and reinterpretation of the Rg Veda’s

canonical “Creation Hymn,” mediated by P. R. Sarkar’s exegesis of Śiva Tantra’s

historiography and ontological philosophy. Sarkar (1921-1990) was an influential

Indian Tantric Guru and philosopher who argued for Tantra’s spiritual and epistemic

influences on Vedic thought. The present study leverages Sarkar’s Tantric

philosophy to reconstruct the Creation Hymn’s influential monistic ontology and

explain why it departs so radically from the Rg Veda’s traditional sacerdotalism that

favored propitiatory rites, not meditative introspection. This essay is to my

knowledge the first of its kind to offer a comparative appraisal of Sarkar’s Tantric

metaphysics and the Creation Hymn’s idealist philosophy.

The Rg Veda is one of the most notoriously difficult pieces of ancient literature.

It is the “earliest Indian religious text,” compiled roughly around 1500 BCE, although

it existed in some oral form for unknown centuries or millennia earlier. Its contents

Justin M. Hewitson 23

include “hymns to the gods and manuals of sacrificial ritual, but also the beginnings

of Indian philosophy proper” (Perrett 8). In the three and a half thousand years since

its compilation, only a handful of English studies (comparative or otherwise) present

the entire work. Studies of Śiva Tantra look marginally better with knowledge of its

classical antinomian schools progressing quickly in the last two decades, but more

research needs to be done to (in)validate Tantra’s ancient existence. For a long time,

scholars denied Tantra’s proto-existence prior to the common era, and “contrarian”

emic historiographies were confronted with skepticism. Nevertheless, our

understanding of the ancient world is gradually evolving as Indologists integrate emic

perspectives that present tantalizing blends of history and myth. Perhaps as the tiny

ratio of the translated Tantric corpus grows, new links to Tantra’s ancient past will

be revealed. This progress is slow because the rare specialists capable of such

translations often work within subdisciplines like philology, not comparative

philosophy. For now, connections between indigenous Tantra and the Vedic era

remain decidedly uncertain. Moreover, while Sarkar is the most influential

contemporary Indian Tantric Guru to speak extensively about the prehistorical

connection of Tantra with Vedic thought, it is worth remembering that he worked

within India’s oral episteme—an emic source of knowledge that traditionally ignored

definitive dates while addressing the macro-history of humanity’s spiritual evolution.

Sarkar categorically states that Śiva Tantra took shape around 5000 BCE—a

claim rarely evaluated by those researchers who are reluctant to consider anything

other than Tantra’s textual tradition as evidence for its existence (Hewitson, “Siva

Tantra” 28). And yet the very texts that prove Tantra’s later existence in the first

millennium CE are, themselves, likely the evolution of long-forgotten prehistorical

ideas disseminated through India’s prehistorical oral traditions. The latter transmitted

the proto-elements of what became Śiva Tantra along with other physical practices,

like haṭhayoga, that supported the spiritual meditation of ascetics striving to

understand the nature of existence and Brahman. Śiva Tantra and Yoga (which

includes eight limbs or practices comprising āṣṭāṅgayoga) are essentially different

words for a set of similar spiritual praxes. Tantra-Yoga praxes like the physical

postures of haṭhayoga, morality, breath control, concentration, and meditation

prepare meditators to attain spiritual liberation by merging their individual

consciousness or ātman (ipseity) with the infinite consciousness of Brahman. I argue

that the latter is the unstated ontological subject of the Creation Hymn that has tested

our understanding of this unique hymn for millennia.

The Vedic religion, introduced by Aryan migrants into India, is

overwhelmingly accepted as the catalyst for later Brahmanical Hindu traditions that


acknowledge Brahman as the ultimate transcendent causal entity—what I have

termed “Metaseity” in this and other publications. Sarkar tilts the origins of Indian

idealism away from a monolithic Vedic source by polemically claiming that

indigenous Śiva Tantra existed in parallel with Vedic beliefs. Some contemporary

Indologists, considering the arguments of emic “Indian philosophers,” accept that

“Vedānta and Tantra-Yoga” were probably ancient parallel traditions that borrowed

from each other. The latter focused on “meditation” while the former was mostly

ritualistic and propitiatory (Hewitson, “Emerson’s Indian” 124). Any comparative

project tackling this claim should be tempered by Michael Witzel’s argument that

Hinduism’s vast transformations since Vedic times make any direct comparisons of

the “Vedic religion” with “Hinduism” and the “various historical levels visible in the

Purānas and in Śaivism, Vaisnavism, Śāktism, and Tantrism” almost impossible

(502). Moreover, studies setting out to reconstruct India’s prehistorical idealism from

Tantra’s poorly understood ancient past will assuredly invite critique from different

quarters as the history of ancient Indian philosophy is a minefield of competing emic

and etic claims. It is immensely challenging to construct an objective academic view

while acknowledging that a lack of textual evidence for Tantra’s prehistorical

presence does not disprove its protean existence in India. Unbiased comparative

research should interrogate accepted philosophical and historical accounts, consider

philological studies, and incorporate emic Tantric 1 perspectives. The present

investigation of Tantric idealism in the Creation Hymn, like so many earlier efforts

to decipher its mysteries encoded in seven Sanskrit verses, is necessarily inferential

and deductive. It should, however, provide sufficient evidence to support my

argument that the ontological view expressed in the hymn is the oldest record of

idealism in India, if not in the history of ideas.

What leap of intuition inspired some unknown “Indo-Āryan” (Jamison and

Brereton, Guide 4) poet-sage, somewhere between the fifth and second millennium

BCE, to hypothesize a non-deified, unnamed causal entity unlike anything found in

the Vedic religion? We read in the Vedic Sanskrit, probably as it was first orated, of

a nameless state transcending both existence and non-existence: नासदासीननो सदासीततदानीी nāsad āsīn nó sád āsīt tadānīṃ—there was no existence nor

nonexistence then. This metaphysical statement is found in the undated Creation

Hymn (X.129), one of the Rg Veda’s (RV) best known and most infamously opaque

tracts. The hymn ascribed to the “Vedic philosopher Paramesthin” has been widely

interpreted over the millennia, greatly influencing “later Indian cosmogonies,” yet

1 This essay uses the terms Tantra/Tantric for Śiva Tantra, Tantric for practitioners of Tantra,

and the adjective tantric.


we are still uncertain as to its actual purport (Jamison and Brereton, The Rigveda

1607). The RV’s hymns are demanding for Sanskritists and all but impenetrable to

non-specialists because Sanskrit words have a breadth of exoteric and esoteric

meaning that makes their application of “puns and wordplay” difficult or “nearly

impossible to translate” in certain instances (Ruppel 1). Moreover, systemic use of

esoteric “words with different meanings” makes interpreting some of the hymns

“exceptionally challenging” (378). Most translations of X.129 struggle to clarify its

mysteries.2 Scholars continue to argue that extant commentary has created more

questions than definitive answers. For example, Jwala Prasad’s 1929 “The

Philosophical Significance of Ṛgveda X, 129, 5, and Verses of an Allied Nature”

focuses on the fifth verse with the reasonable claim that researchers have failed to

successfully interpret it. The verse is either considered “absurd and obscure” so

“given up as an insoluble puzzle” or “simply translated” with uncertain commentary

(586). Suffice to say, the hymn’s uniquely vexing inquiry into “the primordial state

of the world” continues to inspire critique from different quarters (Yao 5).

Commenting on X.129 has also become something of a rite of passage for Indologists

who seek to explain why its cosmology diverges from the rest of the Rg Veda

(hereafter referred to as RV).

These problems should not detract from the possibility that the vulgate RV, as

the oldest surviving portion of India’s undocumented oral pre-histories, includes

references to proto-Tantric philosophy and praxes before they were described in the

classical Tantras. Although X.129 appears to be a later addition to the compiled RV,

many of its linguistic features indicate that it belongs to the oldest of the four Vedas.

Given its immense age, interlocutors struggle to explain how or why X.129’s

metaphysics differ so radically from the RV’s preceding ten thousand verses in

roughly one thousand propitiatory hymns. Sarkar’s emic account of Tantra’s ancient

monistic idealism addresses this lacuna.3 He explains that the “desire to worship”

induced primitive people to pray to nature, then to “men of great wisdom and strength”

(Anandamurti, Subhásita Samgraha: Part 2 1). When their spiritual longing could

no longer be satisfied by these channels, “they took their first steps towards the

contemplation of God through the medium of hero-worship.” Later, their limitless

desire to discover truth led them to realize that the “beginningless, indivisible, super-

2 Space prevents reproducing these translations from Swami Vivekananda, Max Muller, Wendy

Doniger O’Flaherty, A. L. Basham, and H. H. Wilson. 3 See my “Siva Tantra Rediscovered: Transforming the Etic Routes and Emic Roots of Indian

Spirituality” in Roots, Routes and a New Awakening for a more substantial treatment of the history of Tantra spiritual evolution and the extant scholarship supporting earlier claims for Tantra’s dissemination across India.


exultant self” could not be attained through “worship of the finite.” Accordingly, the

“first hint” of meditative approaches or “intuitional science” to intuit the essence of

all existence is found “in the ancient writing of the Rg’veda” (1).

Tantra’s connections with the Creation Hymn’s metaphysical statements about

Metaseity will be closely analyzed in a later section, “Sarkar on Tantra’s Monistic

Idealism,” but first it is necessary to provide some explanation of Sarkar’s tantric

terms for the ontological levels of causal consciousness. Nirguṇa Brahma 4 is the

aforementioned Metaseity that is the ultimate, infinite, unqualified consciousness. It

is ineffable, noncontingent, totally quiescent, and transcends the duality of existence

and nonexistence. Sarkar asserts that creation occurs after a portion of Metaseity is

qualified by its inherent sentient force “Sattvaguṇa” to manifest Cosmic Mind. The

latter is the macrocosmic entity known as Aseity or Sarkar’s Saguṇa Brahma, whose

thought waves/vibrations become qualified to establish cosmogenesis. Sarkar says

the RV indirectly references Metaseity: “Yato vá imáni bhutáni yáyante. Yena játáni

jiivanti. Yat prayantyabhisamvishanti. Tad vijijinásasva tad Brahma.5—The entity

from whom all created beings emerged, By whom they are sustained And [sic] in

whom all are finally dissolved” is Brahman (Anandamurti, Subhásita Samgraha:

Part 2 110). In hierarchical terms, Metaseity is the unqualified witnessing

consciousness of Aseity’s creative thought, the unnamed transcendental subject that

I argue is the ultimate subject of the Creation Hymn.

Closing this introduction warrants a few further observations. After three

decades of personal and academic engagement with Śiva Tantra and lengthy visits

with Tantrics in India, it seems unobjective to ignore rational emic epistemes that

might offer insights into the origins of idealism in the RV. I propose that engaging

with indigenous knowledge will open new pathways to contextualizing Tantra’s

poorly understood impact on India’s ancient socio-spiritual milieu. This study

therefore delineates the obstacles interfering with our understanding of India’s

ancient idealism, presents Sarkar’s exegesis of Tantra’s ancient metaphysics, and

then offers an original translation and commentary on the Tenth Maṇdala’s Nāsadīya

Sūkta “Creation Hymn” in terms of Tantra’s Metaseity.

4 Sanskrit nir (without, not) and guṇa (property or bondage). Thus, Nirguṇa Brahma is the

supreme causal mystery devoid of any qualification; Sarkar sometimes terms it “Śiva consciousness” or “Cosmic Consciousness.”

5 Sarkar developed his own transliteration system for Sanskrit that differs from the standard IAST diacritics used in this essay.


Comparing Idealism: Problems and Solutions

Academics now recognize the critical value of scholarship examining the

movement of ideas and traditions across geographical and conceptual spaces. Mark

Siderits notes in “Comparison or Confluence in Philosophy?” that tackling

“unresolved philosophical problems” is easier when we know the “genealogy of the

problem and how related issues were addressed in the past” (75). Still, comparative

philosophy and disciplined engagement with the history of ideas within universities

is “almost exclusively Western.” The average English-speaking, Western-trained

scholar or Asian scholar trained in Western philosophy/literature possesses little

knowledge of Indian idealism or the meditative praxes that generated it, especially

as most Indic studies have favored “historical” or “philological” paradigms (75).

New research into transcultural philosophical movements will benefit scholarly

exploration into the fusion of ancient philosophies and mitigate “hypothesis

redundancy” (reinventing the philosophical wheel), a tellingly common phenomenon

of one-sided idealist historiographies. Establishing a comparativist understanding of

ancient idealism in India should also decrease uninformed Eurocentric perspectives

about antiquity. Yoshitaka Miike says that “Asiacentric observation” reveals “Asian

cumulative wisdom” containing “ethical ideas and insights about human

communication within and across cultures” (160). Moreover, the conservation of

intellectual work following the widespread dissemination of scientific knowledge

through Big Data offers evidence that similar methods applied to comparative

philosophy should lessen the incidences of Indologists ruefully noting that new

iterations of Western idealism unknowingly echo Tantra or other Indian philosophies.

Dunham, Grant, and Watson point to such a problem in Benjamin Jowett’s assertion

that Plato was “the father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, [and] in literature”

(10). Amongst modern philosophers, the claim for something like “ancient idealism

is controversial.” Jowett references G. E. Moore’s anachronistic position that

“modern idealism” offers a general idea of the universe as “spiritual.” Dunham,

Grant, and Watson also note that Myles Burnyeat’s influential essay “Idealism and

Greek Philosophy” encourages the unreasonable belief that the Western idea of

immanence as essentially “mental or spiritual” belongs to a major philosophical

position not first formulated in antiquity (10). One can excuse nineteenth and

twentieth-century scholars who did not have access to contemporary research, yet

even today Tantra’s remarkably sophisticated metaphysics are mostly obscured by

etic biases and confusing translations of ancient Sanskrit texts.


Critical studies of ancient Indian spiritual epistemes developed by Vedic,

Upanisadic, Tantra-Yogic, and Buddhist philosophers prove that the threads of

idealism existed in India centuries or perhaps millennia before the Presocratics

considered ontology. Stephen Kaplan notes that Advaita Vedānta (non-dualist

Vedānta) is often labeled as “idealism” and that there was a relationship between it

and the influential fourth-century Buddhist Vasubandhu’s Yogacara Buddhism (191).

Identifying the fusion or diffusion of ancient Indian traditions should enhance our

understanding of spiritual texts, but the problem of mediating “our knowledge of one

text upon our knowledge of another text assumes that we know the meaning of the

earlier text” (191-92). Moreover, interpretive studies informed by later Hindu texts

of the Creation Hymn are frequently encumbered by the confusing philological and

philosophical shifts that occurred as the proto-Indo-European dialects morphed into

Vedic and Sanskrit. In short, the context needed to decode the RV’s exoteric and

esoteric descriptions has mostly disappeared from ancestral memory, making any

reconstruction of the monistic idealism in X.129 a monumental task.

Indologists generally accept that the RV was compiled over centuries and that

its creation occurred over unknown millennia before the invention of scripts. Emic

and etic commentators also acknowledge that the Veda’s oral teachings, known to

initiates as Shruti (ear), were initially memorized and transmitted from “guru to

disciple.” Much oral Vedic material was probably lost following their composition

and in the centuries after scripts appeared because Vedic dogma prohibited their

inscription (Sarkar, “A Scriptological”). So there is little surviving context to help us

coherently interpret X.129 without considering an earlier terminus a quo for Tantra.

Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, the translators of The Rigveda: The

Earliest Religious Poetry of India, explain that the RV has “no parallel or closely

contemporary texts,” creating numerous impediments to its accurate translation and

interpretation (3). They echo Sarkar’s claim that the RV’s individual hymns existed

orally “for several millennia,” given that the Indic traditions prohibited the writing

of “sacred texts, especially the Rg Veda” (23). Despite this, the RV is “astoundingly

systematic in its organization” for an antique text, so perhaps a “centralized authority

or agency” compiled the materials after its composition (20). P. L. Bhargava similarly

argues that analyzing the RV proves a single compiler planned the work (243).

Whoever compiled the RV, it is undoubtedly the oldest monument to India’s “three

and a half millennia” or longer “tradition of religious literature” that reflects on “the

mysteries of the cosmos, the divine, and humankind’s relation to them” in sometimes

“profound and uncompromising meditations on cosmic enigmas” (Jamison and

Brereton, The Rigveda: The Earliest 2). Surprisingly, “celebration of the Rg Veda is


muted at best, even within its own tradition, and save for a few famous hymns, its

contents go unnoticed outside of that tradition” (2).

Even though our understanding of classical Indian philosophy has advanced in

the last few decades, the same cannot be said for antiquity; scholars reiterate that the

study of ancient and classical Indian philosophy remains in its infancy (Adamson and

Ganeri xii). There are few surviving texts and no recorded dates from India’s ancient

milieu, confounding our image of the earliest phases of spirituality and philosophy.

With these problems in mind, comprehending X.129’s unique turn from Vedic nature

worship to questions about Metaseity is unlikely without examining Sarkar’s emic

view of how proto-Śiva Tantra’s monistic idealism interacted with Vedic thought.

As Sarkar contends these interactions occurred during the Neolithic-Vedic era, circa

the fifth to first millennium BCE, this essay sets aside the idea that Tantra began

around the opening of the common era for Sarkar’s considerably earlier

historiography.

Sarkar on Tantra’s Monistic Idealism

Assessing Sarkar’s historiography of India’s spiritual evolution is undeniably

problematic. His thousands of extemporaneous discourses on philosophy, Sanskrit,

linguistics, history, medicine, social theory, economics, and meditation are inspired

by India’s ancient Tantric tradition, which ignores the conventions of modern

historians. Sarkarian scholars and practitioners of his Tantra consider him a Sadguru

(a liberated spiritual teacher) who presents unique explanations of Śiva Tantra

derived mostly from intuition, not a library. A polymathic thinker, Sarkar gave

hundreds of discourses on the Vedic era interpolated with verbatim Sanskrit sūtras

and fascinating etymological deconstructions of the exoteric and esoteric meanings

underlying the Sanskrit aphorisms. His emic approach has not prevented prolific

futurists like Sohail Inayatullah, Marcus Bussey, and the economist Ravi Batra from

including Sarkar’s revolutionary social, spiritual, and economic theories in their

research. Inayatullah describes Sarkar as one of the “truly great of the modern era,

one who ushered in the postmodern” not in the least because he is “outside of Western

history,” enabling him to unveil “a new discourse, a new way of constituting the real”

(viii). Sarkar states that his Tantra is an evolution of the ancient spiritual praxes

systematized by the prehistorical “Śiva” in “5500 BCE,” when the RV was still being

composed (Hewitson, “Siva Tantra” 28). There is no direct textual evidence for

Tantra’s presence during this era, yet some academics recognize elements of Tantra-

Yoga in the RV. Moreover, the so-called Śiva seal found in the Indus Valley


civilization around 3000 BCE appears to depict a yogi-like figure doing meditation.

James Mallinson and Mark Singleton note that while prior to 500 BCE there is “little

evidence within South Asian textual or archaeological sources” pointing towards

“systematic, psychophysical techniques” related to the term yoga, some passages in

“the oldest Sanskrit text [RV]” allude to “visionary meditation” (xii). For instance,

X.136, found in the same Maṇdala as X.129, references a “long-haired sage,” and

the hymn seemingly describes “a mystical ascetic tradition similar to those of later

yogis.” The word yoga is also found in the RV to mean “yoke” or “join together” (xii).

Along this vein, Alexis Sanderson’s influential research into classical Kashmiri

Shaivism has established that Tantra is differentiated from traditions that obtain their

“authority from the Vedas” and that Tantrics view their own literature as “additional

and more specialized revelation” (660). I now turn from this brief overview of the

problems confronting Sarkarian research to consider his Tantric metaphysics and

their origin in the mythic figure of Śiva.

Sarkar credits the 5500 BCE Tantric guru Sadāshiva, who was first deified as

Rudra in the RV then as Śiva, with systematizing primitive “yogic metaphysics, ethics,

and meditative praxes” (Hewitson, “Siva Tantra” 28). Prior to this, proto-Tantra

included rudimentary meditative and yogic techniques designed to unify anthropical

consciousness with Metaseity, thereby enabling mokṣa (spiritual enlightenment).

Sarkar polemically claims that the Śiva era coincided with the developmental phases

of the Vedic religion. During this period, “theism or spirituality was not [yet] fully

awakened in the different Aryan clans,” so they sang “hymns and eulogies to appease

the different natural forces” (Sarkar, Discourses 142). The historical Śiva inspired

“some of India’s warring Aryan and indigenous” groups to accept a “common

spiritual ideology” that later became recognized as Śiva Tantra or Shaivism. The

initial Aryan groups that settled in the hills of Northern India known as “Kash”

(present-day Kashmir) defeated the “ancient non-Aryan inhabitants” but were

subsequently “influenced by non-Aryan culture.” They continued to study the Vedas

while engaging with “indigenous Indian Tantra” (146). 6 Consequently, signs of

Tantra-Yoga appear in the Atharvaveda (the second Veda) and traditional systems of

Vedic initiation incorporated Tantric praxes. Ramesh Bjonnes argues that all yogic

references to “breathing exercises and yoga in general in the Atharva Veda” stem

from the influence of Śiva Tantra “thousands of years earlier” (127). L. P. Singh says

the Atharvaveda does not depict “Aryan civilization” but a “subtle philosophy” in

the teachings of “Nishingha Tapaniiya” that indicate indigenous Tantra was more

6 Kashmir would later become a center of Shaivism; its scholars produced hundreds of tracts on

classical Tantra, which are mostly untranslated.


“prominent than the Vedic ideal of the Āryan civilization” (19). These scholars

attribute the philosophical range of Vedic thought to the “cultural blending of Indo-

Āryan civilization,” which might explain why X.129 and later Vedic hymns allude

to Tantra’s philosophy and praxes as the original “vehicles . . . of spiritual

illumination” (Singh 19). Records show that by the time Patañjali’s famous

Yogasūtras recorded these praxes in its 196 aphorisms, somewhere between 500 BCE

and 400 CE, Tantra and Yoga emerged as separate traditions that academics view as

reactions to Vedic and Buddhist philosophy. Sarkar rejects this later etic appraisal of

Tantra’s origin as a reaction to Vedic civilization.

Śiva is Tantra’s avatar of monistic idealism, the “divine principle of

Brahmahood (Aseity)” (Anandamurti, Yoga Sādhanā 158). Sarkar’s technical

Sanskrit term for Śiva’s embodiment of Aseity is Taraka Brahma. This liberated

entity moves between the dimensions of physicality and consciousness, continually

reifying the “message of consciousness (cetane)” as the source of existence “without

ignoring the material world” (158). Because Metaseity is an “absolutely independent”

state, it can only be reached through Taraka Brahma, the spiritually realized

intermediary, who teaches initiates the philosophy and meditative praxes that liberate

ipseity from duality (Sarkar “What Is”). Śiva was the first Taraka Brahma to explain

the transcendental links between Metaseity and creation. He introduced prehistorical

India to esoteric meditations that used mantra and symbolic ideation to establish two

salvatory states of spiritual enstasis (trance). During meditation, Tantrics train the

mind to flow in “one [spiritual] direction” to overcome its extroversive tendencies,

and once the single-pointed concentration of “ekágra bhumi” is achieved, meditators

enter the penultimate and ultimate levels of spiritual trance known as savikalpa and

nirvikalpa samādhi (Sarkar “Cognitive Force”). In savikalpa samādhi, anthropical

consciousness experiences Saguṇa Brahma (Aseity—Purusa in the RV) as that

Cosmic Mind whose mental vibrations (thoughts) manifest the cosmos. Savikalpa

samādhi is the purest expression of duality whereby only consciousness of ipseity

and Aseity remain. The Sanskrit aphorism bhumáivyápte mahati

ahamcittayorpranáshe sagunásthitih savikalpasamádhih vá refers to this

macrocosmic stance: “when ipseity and mind are merged with Aseity, ‘the merger is

called sagunásthitih or savikalpa samádhi’” (Anandamurti, Yoga Sādhanā 24).

While this qualified enstasis lasts, Aseity is recognized as the sole causal entity, and

the meditator experiences a state of pure duality whereby their individual

consciousness directly experiences the infinite mind of Aseity in a blissful trance.

According to Tantric doctrine, it may take decades or lifetimes of dedicated

practice to experience the penultimate stage of Cosmic Mind, yet even those who


obtain knowledge of Aseity’s intermediary role have not overcome the ceaseless

qualifying forces that sustain the cosmos. The highest state of reality is the infinite

unqualified consciousness of Metaseity that transcends description, as it is beyond

any qualification. Metaseity is the supreme witness to all of creation, including that

portion of itself that becomes slightly qualified to generate Aseity’s cosmic mind. In

more technical terms, Aseity is the first composite expression of a prakṛti and

sentient consciousness that exist within Metaseity in perfect transcendent balance

prior to creation. Prakṛti is the collective tantric term for the three guṇas or qualifying

forces that constrain creation. Sarkar explains that Aseity and creation arise from

Metaseity when the dynamic balance of the three guṇas is disrupted. This means that

all entities and phenomena are essentially “triple-attributional” vibrations, limited in

varying degrees by Tamoguṇa, the static force; Rajoguṇa, the mutative force; or

Sattvaguṇa, the sentient force (Anandamurti, Subhásita Samgraha: Part 2 41).7 The

combination of “Purusa” (consciousness/ātman) and “Prakṛti” are known as

“Brahma” (Aseity). Both these properties are “non-causal” and are therefore not

“subordinate to the other” (Sarkar “What Is”). But as noted above, Aseity is

subordinate to Nirguṇa Brahma (Metaseity) as the latter is not impacted by prakṛti’s

vibrations and is therefore beyond creation. Nirguṇa Brahma has no “attributes or

qualifications” because it is by definition “beyond guṇa or without guṇa” (“What

Is”). In the translation that follows, I will argue that X.129 seems to suggest that true

liberation or knowledge of ultimate reality requires that the seeker merge with

Metaseity.

Before examining the Creation Hymn, it is appropriate to remember that the

motivation of all onto-cosmological hypotheses is to present a unified causal theory

unencumbered by the problem of infinite causal regressions. Simply put,

metaphysicians want to know what it was like before the explosion of energy or God

expanded the boundaries of our cosmos beyond accurate empirical measurement.

Historical responses to this problem have included developments in field or ether

theory, quantum physics, and idealist proposals of a unifying universal consciousness.

From Sarkar’s standpoint, Metaseity is the unqualified consciousness that contains

“areas” where consciousness becomes less condensed, disrupting prakṛti’s

equilibrium so that the sentient force dominates and Aseity manifests. Metaseity is

analogous to an infinite ocean and Aseity is a vast iceberg floating in this water.

Ocean and ice have the same essence; any apparent differences are due to temperature

or pressure variations that temporarily impact water. Once the disruption is removed,

7 I explain in my section on idealism in the RV below that the nominal roots of Tamoguṇa and

Rajoguṇa appear in X.129, something that has not been commented on previously.


water and ice are identical. A logical counterargument to this analogy is that

homeostatic changes are generally a byproduct of external causes, so the question of

infinite regression has not been resolved. Nevertheless, tantric ontology rejects

infinite causality in much the same way that X.129 represents Metaseity as being

devoid of all external influences. Any apparent changes, such as the creation of

Aseity and its subsequent role in cosmogenesis, occur within the infinitude of

Metaseity and its qualifying forces. Why Metaseity “allows” a portion of itself to

become Aseity, which in turn thinks the cosmos into being, is beyond

intellectualization—at least in terms of Metaseity’s transformation into Aseity. This

is because once a meditator merges with Metaseity during nirvikalpa samādhi, they

enter unqualified monism; thus, human mind ceases to exist in this infinite state

beyond all subject-object distinctions. This causal process, with all its ontological

questions, is the subject matter of the Creation Hymn discussed in the following

sections.

Background to the Creation Hymn

X.129 is found in Maṇdala X, the final book of the RV that contains 191 hymns,

equaling the number of hymns found in Maṇdala I. The first and final book belong

to a seemingly later collection; however, the descriptions of rituals and “meta-

reflections on the sacrifice and its parts” and other “divine forces peripheral to the

soma sacrifice” in Maṇdala X contain stylistic and lexical forms that make them

clearly Rigvedic (Jamison and Brereton, The Rigveda 1367). Many of the hymns in

these books mirror the linguistic features of the RV’s earlier books, undermining any

“crude classification” of their lineage (Jamison and Brereton, The Rigveda: A Guide

29). It is noteworthy that hymns with proto-Tantric elements appear primarily in

Maṇdala X, and some of these hymns overlap with others in the “second oldest Vedic

text, the Atharvaveda” (29). Sarkar claims that the Atharvaveda was authored by

“scholars of Kashmir” who were greatly influenced by tantric culture (“A

Scriptological”). His historiographic and ontological view of Tantra’s monistic

idealism therefore offers a route into determining why and how X.129’s abstract

metaphysics diverge so remarkably from the RV’s propitiatory hymns. We can make

better sense of X.129’s unique and vexing metaphysical queries by acknowledging

the possible influences of a parallel indigenous tantric system that was different to

the Vedic “mnemonic system” traditionally used to memorize the hymns (Samuel

28).


A few more historical and methodological issues warrant brief mention before

examining my translation and interpretation of X.129. H. H. Wilson’s 1813 and R.

T. H. Griffith’s 1892 works were the only complete (if distorted) English translations

of the RV’s 1028 hymns until Jamison and Brereton’s monumental The Rigveda: The

Earliest Religious Poetry of India was published in 2014. The latter text omits the

original Sanskrit, so we still lack a critical Sanskrit-English edition. This aside,

Jamison and Brereton’s modern commentary, informed by their extensive Indic and

philological research, is invaluable for a more general audience. Their introduction

reiterates that there is little contemporary scholarship on the RV because it is quite

simply “very long and very hard” to understand (3). In this regard, Karen Thomson

and Jonathan Slocum argue that overdependence on the “vast body of the derivative

material” studied by Indologists to interpret “the earliest Sanskrit text” that was

“handed down orally, from generation to generation” will be fundamentally

“misleading” and that several “ancient mistranslations continue to be maintained

with unshakable conviction by Vedic scholars” (“Ancient Sanskrit Online: Series

Introduction”). They see the RV’s nuanced levels covered by a “mass of inherited

misunderstandings that overlay the text like later strata at an archaeological site,”

leaving “few Sanskrit scholars . . . interested in studying the Rigveda.” These

difficulties were exacerbated by the fact that “the original poetic form” of the RV was

inaccessible for millennia; fortunately, it has since been restored (“Ancient Sanskrit

Online: Series Introduction.”).8

Any translation of X.129 must account for Vedic Sanskrit being a highly

inflected language. For example, the simple omission or addition of the diacritic

above the Sanskrit letter ā either negates or affirms a nominal state—this negation is

somewhat equivalent to the English prefixes and suffixes “un-, in-, non-, -less,” and

this use is a common linguistic feature in Sanskrit vocabulary (Ruppel 427). What is

more, determining the subject of a Sanskrit clause by recognizing the nominative,

accusative, and instrumental case endings is crucial to any translation or

philosophical rendering of the Creation Hymn. Interpreters are often compelled to

put forth their best guess when it comes to prioritizing a particular definition. The

same issue, along with the limits of my Sanskrit, vexes my interpretation of X.129’s

8 I interpret the latest metrically restored online version revised by Thomson and Slocum, hosted

by the University of Texas at Austin’s Linguistics Research Center. Their version is itself derived from an earlier electronic version: Rig Veda, A Metrically Restored Text, edited by Barend A. van Nooten and Gary B. Holland, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 50. Michael Witzel’s preface to the published version of the latter claims that after “more than 120 years” of waiting, the RV is now available in “a phonetic shape that is very close to the form in which it was composed more than 3000 years ago” (Preface).


metaphysics in relation to Metaseity, Aseity, and creation. For example, my decision

to place the word thought after another nominal form implies the latter is the subject,

and this shapes the contextual reading of the hymn, despite uncertainties that are

often hidden from the non-specialist reader of such research. In other words, the

syntactical decisions made by translators impacts the criticism and common

understanding of X.129. Another troubling issue is the frequent absence of contextual

philological and philosophical elements used to inform different interpretations,

which unduly taxes effective criticism. For better or worse, my translation and

interpretation address this problem in X.129’s first verse by including Devanāgarī,

IAST romanization, an English translation, and substantial comparative commentary.

I also use brackets for explanatory or alternative terms in my translations of the verses.

While this decision makes my translations less poetic, it makes other potential uses

more transparent for the reader. I have cross-referenced many of my translations of

X.129’s Sanskrit with Hermann Grassmann’s German Worterbuch Zum Rig-Veda

and the excellent online “Digital Corpus of Sanskrit.” When warranted, I include

these references—otherwise I omit the two hundred or so extensively compared

references. To avoid unnecessarily overburdening the reader, verses two through

seven omit exacting word for word deconstruction but otherwise retain the other

features of my analysis.

The problems of accurate interpretation are not only linguistic but include

geopolitical, social, and religious factors as well as emic and etic concerns. Indians

who see themselves belonging to the Brahmanical traditions consider the Vedas the

original source material for their beliefs. On the surface this should present no

problems, except that there have been centuries of debate over whether the composers

of the RV were indigenous or migrants/invaders that brought their religion into India.

As the pan-Indian Brahmanical traditions are so widely adopted, it is often seen as a

matter of national importance for India to assert its independence from European

influences. Claims that the Vedas were imported into India have been tackled for

decades. On the question of esoteric Vedic teachings, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), an

influential Indian mystic-philosopher, writes in 1915 that “[a]ccording to current

conceptions the heart of that ancient mystery has been plucked out and revealed to

the gaze of all, or rather no real secret ever existed” (3). He does not view the hymns

of the Vedas as “the sacrificial compositions of a primitive and still barbarous race,”

which gradually changed as they borrowed “deeper psychological and moral ideas . . .

from the hostile Dravidians, the ‘robbers’ and ‘Veda haters’ freely cursed in the

hymns themselves.” He claims that this “modern theory,” which develops from the

accepted idea of rapid “human evolution from the quite recent savage,” is reified by


“a number of Sciences, unhappily still young and still largely conjectural in their

methods and shifting in their results, —Comparative Philology, Comparative

Mythology and the Science of Comparative Religion” (3). In the century that has

passed since Aurobindo wrote these words, DNA analysis has given evidence for

some form of Aryan migration. Nevertheless, Aurobindo is right that the Vedic

compositions serve as some of the source for “the world’s richest and profoundest

religions” and “some of its subtlest metaphysical philosophies.” Over “thousands of

years they have been revered as the origin and standard of all that can be held as

authoritative and true in Brahmana and Upanishad, in Tantra and Purana.” Yet, he

sees the European model as reifying the “naïve superstitious fancies of untaught and

materialistic barbarians concerned only with the most external gains and enjoyments

and ignorant of all but the most elementary moral notions or religious aspirations.”

There is, however, the problem of those occasional hymns which “destroy this total

impression” (5). Aurobindo is most certainly alluding to X.129 and its spiritual

philosophy, which is where I now turn.

Idealism in the Creation Hymn

1. नासदासीननो सदासीततदानी ी नासीदरजो नो वयोमा परो यत | किमावरीवः िह िसय शममननमभः किमासीदगहनी गभीरम ॥ १॥

nāsad āsīn nó sád āsīt tadānīṃ nāsīd rájo nó víomā paró yát

kím āvarīvaḥ kuha kásya sármann ámbhaḥ kím āsīd gáhanaṃ gabhīrám

There was no existence and no nonexistence then; there was no dark space [mutative

force] and no universe beyond that.

What became [vibrated?] Where was its mysterious cause? Was there water

[Metaseity] infinitely deep?

The first line introduces a distinctive metaphysical inquiry presaging apophatic

mystical statements about Metaseity found in later esoteric traditions that is strikingly

different from the RV’s preceding verses. It begins with nāsad, hence the hymn’s

name: Nāsadīya Sūkta. Observing the Sanskrit rules of sandhi, 9 nāsad can be

deconstructed into the “negative particle” na and the adjectival असत asat or “non-

existent, non-being” (Joseph 113). It can thus be translated as “not non-existence.”

Both āsīn and āsīt function as “was” and nó as “nor.” Sád is derived from the

adjectival sat (existent or existent being). Brereton’s “Edifying Puzzlement: Ṛgveda

9 The phonological changes to Sanskrit words across word boundaries.


10.129 and the Uses of Enigma” sees most English translations treating ásat and sát

as “abstract nouns: ‘nonbeing’ and ‘being’ or ‘nonexistence’ and ‘existence’” (250).

They are, however, firstly adjectival and are used in this sense in “the oldest

commentary on this hymn,” the Sathapatha Brāhmaṇa, leaving the “subject unstated.”

Brereton argues that the implied subject of nonexistence and existence is “idám ‘this

(world)’” (250). Tadānīṃ simply means “at that time” or “then.”

H. H. Wilson (1786-1860), one of the previously mentioned Western

commentators, contends that the unstated entity of the first line is “PARAMATMAN,

the author of the creation, preservation and dissolution of the various entities (bhavas)”

(350). Although not explicitly stated, Wilson seems to view Paramatman as an

amalgam of Metaseity and Aseity. His footnote to “The nonexistent was not, the

existence was not” asserts that deciphering the line requires limiting the meaning of

“sat and asat” to “matter and spirit.” In the “Vaidik [Vedic] system” these do not

have an independent existence but merge together in the “one invisible, immaterial,

incomprehensible First Cause, or Brahma.” Wilson’s explanation suffers (like most

early Indology) from limited philosophical context. Yet his description roughly

follows Tantric cosmology because the verse does not imply that there is “no cause

or origin” or “author of the universe, exist[ing] before creation.” Rather it means that

“nothing else existed, neither matter nor spirit, and consequently that He created both”

(350). Presumably, the pronoun He refers to Aseity or Metaseity. Remember that

Tantric ontology considers Metaseity the a priori unqualified consciousness; this

means that if it is the implied subject of the first line, Aseity is its first qualified object.

On the other hand, if Aseity is the unstated subject, it must be qualified. We have

seen earlier that Aseity is qualified by the sentient force of sattvaguṇa and works

ontogenetically alongside prakṛti to manifest the universe. It thus seems logical to

suggest that Metaseity is the state before existence and nonexistence because it is the

infinite causal entity.

Brereton interprets the first verse to mean “The nonexistent did not exist, nor

did the existent exist at that time. There existed neither the mid space nor the heaven

beyond. What stirred? From where and in whose protection? Did water exist, a deep

depth?” Sri Aurobindo translates the first verse: “Then existence was not nor non-

existence, the mid-world was not nor the Ether nor what is beyond. What covered all?

Where was it? In whose refuge? What was that ocean dense and deep?” (Pandit 132).

While the opening lines of the first verse are similar, Aurobindo questions the nature

of that “ocean” while Brereton asks if “water” existed. One way to deconstruct these

different interpretations is to recognize that ancient Indian thinkers used water to

symbolize consciousness. Aurobindo says that Vedic composers used “the image of


water” both figuratively and as a “psychological symbol” for layers of “existence,”

including ipseity, Aseity, and Metaseity (107). The latter two are represented by

Aurobindo’s “subconscient” and “superconscient” and are represented in the Vedas

and Puranas as “the image of infinite and eternal existence” (107-8). I contend the

“infinitely deep water” in this verse stands for either Metaseity or Aseity. Given

Brereton’s statement that “none of the divisions that characterized the world existed”

during this primordial state and my analysis of the second verse, in which none of

the guṇas are active, Metaseity seems the strongest candidate for X.129’s first

unnamed subject (250).

The second line, “nāsīd rájo nó víomā paró yát” (there was no dark space and

no universe beyond that), subtly introduces rajas as the Tantric mutative principle.

Nāsīd simply means “neither.” Other translators associate rájo with the “middle

world” juxtaposed with the “ether” or heavens. Even these relatively mundane

translations leave us uncertain of rájo’s true meaning. The Sanskrit root of rájo (rajas)

has over twenty possible definitions: “the second of the three qualities, a kind of plant,

affection, air, any small particle of matter, atmosphere, autumn, clouds, cultivated or

plowed land, darkness, dimness, dirt, dust, emotion, fields, firmament, gloom,

impurity, mist, passion, region of clouds, safflower, sperm, the ‘darkening’ quality,

the dust or pollen of flowers, the menstrual discharge of a woman, the sphere of vapor

or mist, tin, and vapour” (Hellwig).10 According to Tantric metaphysics, rájo (dark

space) connotes the mutative qualifying force that establishes nescience after Aseity

arises from Metaseity and begins to think the universe into being. Aseity establishes

cosmogenesis and duality through the mutative force of rajas. Put another way, all

subject-object distinctions require rajas. Furthermore, without Aseity’s function as

the Cosmic Mind, no phenomenon of darkness or light is possible.11

Closing off my analysis of the first verse, Tantra recognizes that Metaseity’s

supreme unqualified state possesses infinite potential. As all manifest phenomena

require a cause, Metaseity is the fundamental source of ontogenesis. X129’s opening

verse is a reflection on the unqualified entity who is neither existent nor nonexistent.

This confusing antithetical ontology is not encountered elsewhere in the RV, but

when it is read in tandem with Tantric metaphysics, a more coherent cosmology can

be reconstructed. Regardless of the hymn’s actual inspiration, it is evidence of

10 For a deeper look into the word forms used in X.129, see the lemma analysis of rajas at the

Digital Corpus of Sanskrit. 11 In my discussion of the third verse’s description of darkness, I explain how the static force

táma generates spiritual or quotidian darkness.


prehistorical Indian engagement with a strain of abstract idealist causality unlike any

other philosophy preceding it. We see the second line question Metaseity’s

transformation by asking “what became?” and “where was its cause?” These queries

indicate that something, likely Aseity, was coming into being.

2. न मतयरासीदमती न तकहम न रातरया अहन आसीतपरितः | आनीदवाती सवधया तदिी तसमादधानयनन परः किञचनास ॥२॥ ná mrtyur āsīd amŕtaṃ ná tárhi, ná rātriyā áhna āsīt praketáḥ.

ānīd avātáṃ svadháyā tád ékaṃ, tásmād dhānyán ná paráḥ kíṃ canāsa.

There was no death nor immortality [before Metaseity]; no phenomena of darkness

[night] or light [day].

The Singularity [Metaseity] breathed [creating Aseity]; nothing else transcended it.

The second verse continues with the first verse’s via negativa description of

Metaseity. While the RV typically deifies and immortalizes natural forces, this verse

introduces a noumenal state beyond divinity that is entirely devoid of mundane and

supramundane properties. Its ontological reduction, preceding Descartes’s radical

skepticism and Husserl’s transcendental reduction by at least four thousand years,

inspires the listener to ask what could be beyond existence and nonexistence, beyond

“death” and “immortality”? One answer often fronted by scientists and Buddhists,

albeit in different terms, is nothingness. Yet neither side logically explains how

causality exists without consciousness or materiality. Buddhist conceptions of

sūnyatā (absolute void) fall apart trying to rationally formulate how the five

aggregates (skandhas) and mind subsequently arise from nothingness. Likewise,

scientific hypotheses fizzle out in the quantum silence prior to the Big Bang.

Lawrence Krauss’s 2014 bestseller, A Universe from Nothing, claims that the

explosion of energy and matter that formed the cosmos originated in “nothing.” Even

in the rarefied world of quantum physics and mathematical theories concerning dark

energy, this use of “nothing” is troubling. In his foreword to Krauss’s work, Neil

deGrasse Tyson notes that “Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is something,” which is

“how a cosmos can be spawned from the void” (i; emphasis added). Sarkar’s

response would be that Metaseity is unquantifiable/unqualified consciousness not

nothingness. Thus, Sarkar says that when “there is no expressed activity of Prakṛti,”

the void remains “objectless or nirguna” (Idea 1). Echoing the Creation Hymn’s

second verse, “Nirguna is neither perishable nor imperishable. It is beyond these. It

is absolutely liberated” (Anandamurti, Subhásita Samgraha: Part 1 57).


The opening line of the second verse further reinforces my claim that the

nameless subject introduced in the first verse is Metaseity. Commentators have

focused on ékam (the Singularity or One) in the second line as the first nominal

expression of this mysterious entity. Zhihua Yao’s comparative cosmological study,

“One, Water, and Cosmogony: Reflections on the Rgveda X.129 and the Taiyi Sheng

Shui,” does not uncover other references to the “One” in the RV. Yao notes that “it

is frequently represented by the image of the cosmic egg that floats on the surface of

the waters (ṚV X.82, 121), or by a personalized creator Prajāpati (“lord of created

beings,” ṚV X.121) or Visvakarman (“maker of all,” ṚV X.81, 82)” (6). These

associations may be reasonable in the context of those specific hymns; yet if X.129

is a Tantric (or a cohesive) metaphysics, the One/singularity of verse two is

necessarily Metaseity not some deified creator. No phenomena of “death nor

immortality” nor “darkness or light” can arise in Metaseity while prakṛti’s qualifying

forces are balanced. Consequently, while “Prakrti is dormant” there is “no knowledge

of the ‘I’ feeling as the object of Consciousness” nor “any mental vibration” (Sarkar

“Prakrti”). The perception of duality arises with Aseity’s thought processes, heralded

by the second line’s obscure reference to “breathing.” Here, breathing probably

symbolizes the seminal vibrations of “sattvaguna” that begin to circumscribe “the

universal Cosmic Consciousness,” providing Aseity with “knowledge of existence”

(“Prakrti”). The final clause of verse two, “nothing else transcended it,” reinforces

Metaseity’s inexpressible infinitude.

3. तम आसीततमसा गहळमगर परिती सलििी सवामऽइदम | तचछयनाभवकपकहती यदासीततपससतनमकहनाजायतिम ॥३॥ táma āsīt támasā gūháḷam ágre, apraketáṃ saliláṃ sárvam ā idám.

tuchyénābhu ápihitaṃ yád āsīt, tápasas tán mahinājāyataíkam.

At first the mystery [Metaseity] was hidden by darkness (táma: nescience); its infinite

waters [saliláṃ: water or consciousness] were quiescent.

The great void [Metaseity] existed; using its [spiritual] intention [guṇas] it created

[tápas: vibrated/heated] the One [Aseity].

Metaseity’s ineffable status and the symbolism of water as consciousness

carries through the first line of the third verse. More significantly for the origin of

idealism in Indian philosophy, the second line establishes that “intention” or spiritual

will is the first active causal attribute that generates Cosmic Mind. More intriguingly,

the Sanskrit noun stem for tamasaguṇa, Tantra’s static force, occurs twice in the first

line: táma āsīt támasā gūháḷam ágre. Others have translated this line to essentially


say “darkness was hidden by darkness.” Walter H. Maurer’s influential analysis of

X.129 considers the syntactical choices made by previous translators while

attempting to explain this double reference to darkness: “darkness it was; hidden by

darkness in the beginning” or “darkness it was, by darkness hidden in the beginning.”

I agree with his declaration that they mean the same thing and that darkness is a

byproduct of the “state of things described in the first verse” (225). Primal darkness

is commonly featured in other creation myths. For example, the Book of Genesis

proclaims that during the first phase of creation “the earth was without form, and

void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Carrol 1). X.129 is ambiguous as

to whether támasā gūháḷam ágre (at first covered by darkness) describes Metaseity

or Aseity. As the second line most likely articulates how Aseity is generated, I

suggest the first reference to darkness that I translate as “the mystery” reemphasizes

Metaseity’s ineffability. Nevertheless, I hesitate to attribute darkness to Metaseity

because polarities do not exist without some form of mind to experience them. As it

is, the first three verses reject substantive divisions in Metaseity. Perhaps the poet-

sage simply sets aside inadequate description of Metaseity by veiling its mystery in

a shroud of darkness. Támasā can also mean darkness or blindness—in these lines it

almost certainly means both (Grassmann 524).12 Roughly a millennia later, Plato

explains in the Republic’s Analogy of the Cave that perception depends on the

interplay of light and darkness; an excess of either makes the unprepared mind blind

to grasping truth or recognizing delusion.

The second line of verse three explores the causal state introduced by the

second verse. The “great void” (Metaseity) initially activates its potentiality via

“intention” and tápasas. The latter term describes a special kind of spiritual praxis

that has confusingly been translated as “heat” by other studies. For the ascetic Tantric

and Brahmanical traditions, tápasas plays a key role in spiritual liberation and is

linked to the heat generated by ascetic ritualism and subduing the body’s desires

through intense physical mortifications. Wendy Doniger’s poetic translation of the

second line, “the life force that was covered with emptiness, that one arose through

the power of heat,” parallels other baffling translations (25; 10.129 Creation Hymn).

It renders the opaque Sanskrit syntax into appropriate English, but the unclear subject

references undermine a cohesive ontological explanation of the second line in

relation to the preceding stanzas. Although the third verse does not directly reference

Tantra’s sentient force, it could profitably be linked to Aseity’s spiritual tápasas that

sustains creation through its ceaseless thought vibrations. As the preceding subject

12 Translated from the original German definitions found in Hermann Grassmann’s canonical

Worterbuch zum Rig-Veda.


of the hymn is non-anthropomorphic, tápasas cannot signify ritualism or austerities.

Sarkar’s etymological analysis of Atapa, whose “verbal root tap is ‘to heat,’ ‘to go

through hardship,’” suggests a resolution to the metaphysical failings of earlier

translations (“Shabda” Atapa). Atapa refers to a special kind of hardship willingly

undertaken “to accomplish something for the attainment of welfare (Shreya)” (Atapa).

This spiritual “hardship” is the devolutionary phase as a portion of Metaseity

becomes qualified by prakṛti’s sentient force, allowing Cosmic Mind to commence

creation.

It might appear peculiar to equate hardship with Metaseity or Aseity, but

Tantric philosophy traditionally uses qualification as the root cause of hardship or

suffering. In my earlier discussion, I explained that the first link between Metaseity

and Aseity is the vibrational power of sattvaguṇa as the purest spiritual expression

of duality. The sentient force is the inherent expansive nature within Cosmic Mind

that propels all entities to ultimately move towards infinite expansion. Its activity is

evidenced by the mundane and supra-mundane desires of all conscious beings to

procreate, acquire, survive, and experience Metaseity. The human side of tápasas

involves practicing intense meditation and physical austerities for spiritual and

universal welfare, thereby reversing the mind’s extroversive movement towards

duality. Practitioners who transcend duality enter the samādhi states described earlier.

Tantra recognizes that intense spiritual longing and meditative praxes are

prerequisites to experience Aseity. Meditators counter the mutative and static guṇa,

which incline human minds towards duality, by associating all phenomena with

Aseity’s thought waves. With sufficient practice—and deep enough concentration

during meditation—the constant association of all entities with Aseity enables

meditators to experience the unified field of Aseity’s thought vibrations during

savikalpa samādhi. Tápasas and savikalpa samādhi bring the meditator into an

awareness “of the universal interconnectedness that reinforces their sense of

existential responsibility” towards the cosmos (Hewitson, “Mediating” 6). In rare

cases, even mukti (the freeing of ipseity) is completely transcended once the

aspirant’s intense devotion to Metaseity ensconces them in monism. This mystical

praxis is apparent in the lines of the next verse which accentuate knowledge of the

causal relationship between Aseity’s desire and cosmogenesis.

4. िामसतदगर समवतमतालध मनसो रतः परथमी यदासीत | सतो बनधमसकत कनरकवनदनहकद परतीषया िवयो मनीषा ॥४॥ kāmas tád ágre sám avartatādhi, mánaso rétaḥ prathamáṃ yád āsīt.

sató bándhum ásati nír avindan, hrdí pratīṣyā kaváyo manīṣā.


The first product of Aseity’s mind was loving desire; human mind exists [follows]

from that.

Sages meditated on the heart [of mind] to discover the causal link between existence

and nonexistence.

We see in the first line of the fourth verse the earliest articulation of idealism

recognizable in India’s spiritual traditions. Aseity’s first act-thought is “loving desire”

and the genesis of “human mind” or creation depends on that force. Maurer points

out that only a few researchers devote time to this stanza’s almost incoherent halves

and its “obscure relationship to what precedes and what follows.” Nevertheless, he

maintains that the fourth verse is “the highpoint of the entire poem” (226). He rightly

says that the consequence of spiritual tápasas in the third verse is “thinking thoughts”

which become “the germ of all things” (227). Jwala Prasad offers a slightly different

hypothesis. He acknowledges that “kāma,” as “the first creative impulse,” causes “the

actual creation of the universe,” but it is encoded in X.129 as both the preparation for

a ritual sacrifice and cosmogenesis (590). Brereton sees the desire mentioned in the

fourth verse arising from thought. His analysis accords with the earliest commentary

on the hymn: “thought is in no way existent, (and) in no way is it non-existent” (254).

I agree that Aseity’s initial act of creation is propelled by desire (kāmas) as the primal

impetus towards infinite expression. However, the “hidden subject” dominating the

first three verses is not thought but Metaseity. Regardless of where academic

judgment falls on this matter, it is undeniable that the cosmological role of desire and

thought in the Creation Hymn cements its status as an idealist account of reality.

At this point, I would like to interject with a Tantric synthesis of the preceding

verses to clarify the fourth verse’s puzzling metaphysics: Aseity’s thought vibrations

establish the impetus towards material and spiritual existence by infusing all entities

with an unequal mix of prakṛti’s sentient, mutative, and static forces. As a result, all

entities owe their happiness and suffering to the flow of Aseity’s introversial and

extroversial vibrations, which impact either spiritual evolution or material expression

(crudification) as the movement between sentience and nescience. Mind arises at the

stage when matter, driven by the fundamental impulse of the sentient force, develops

sufficiently to support higher levels of consciousness. I will not go so far as to claim

that X.129 fully represents this sophisticated tantric theory, but as Aseity’s initial

expression of “loving desire” is the de facto cause of “human mind,” it is reasonable

to accept that X.129 contains a rudimentary ontological model of the “stepdown”

transformation of unqualified consciousness into Aseity and at some point in

evolution into anthropical mind.


The final line of the fourth verse is also subject to considerable debate. Brereton

argues that it uncovers the link between “existence and nonexistence” through the

“inspired” thought of the Vedic poets. This self-reflexive process elevated the

position of ancient Vedic poets because “thought and its expression in speech” gave

the priests their power (255). On the other hand, Maurice Bloomfield’s earlier

translation says that “the sages by devotion found the root of being in nonbeing,

seeking it in (their) heart” (237). Either of these variants are plausible. Brereton’s

analysis adheres to current scholarly attitudes towards Vedic cultural and religious

practices. Bloomfield’s does not elaborate beyond claiming that the second line

introduces readers to the sages’ “primordial creative role,” whose “devotion is the

real promotive force in the act of creation” (237). His reading would have served

better as an early explanation of bhakti (devotionalism), used by Tantrics to realize

Śiva consciousness. Returning to my translation, “Sages meditated on the heart (of

mind) to discover the causal link between existence and nonexistence” is readily

explained in terms of the ancients’ intuition of the transcendental connection between

Metaseity and human mind during meditation. One component of such meditation is

concentrating on the heart-mind hrdí or heart plexus. I do not think it necessary to

distinguish between heart and mind in this sentence for they serve the same purpose:

reifying the intuitional experience described by the verse that follows.

5. कतरशचीनो कवततो रशमिरषामधः शमसवदासीदपरर शमसवदासीत | रतोधा आसनमकहमान आसनतसवधा अवसतातपरयकतः परसतात ॥५॥ tirascīno vítato rasmír eṣām, adháḥ svid āsīd upári svid āsīt.

retodhā āsan mahimāna āsan, svadhā avástāt práyatiḥ parástāt.

Their [the sage’s] cord of light [concentration/mental intention] extended across the

void [nescience]; mindless of up or down.

There was infinite potentiality and causality; there was independent thought

[existence] below [within] and infinite surrender beyond.

I pointed out earlier that many scholars consider the fifth verse the most

perplexing stanza because it is entirely unintelligible without the mystical context of

meditative praxes. It begins by describing a spiritual method that empowers the sage

to move between immanence and transcendence. The sage’s enigmatic “cord of light”

that extends tirascīno (across the void) symbolizes the concentrated flow of mind

(Sarkar’s ekágra bhumi) towards Metaseity, facilitating the meditator’s entry into the

spiritual trance of savikalpa samādhi. Furthermore, references to “cords” or “thread”

abound in almost every etymology of the term Tantra. The Sanskrit verb tan means


“to expand,” and it “literally denotes anything that can be stretched or extended like

threads on a loom” (Joshi 39).13 I contend that the “cord of light . . . extended across

the void” describes a meditator whose intense spiritual longing triggers the mental

expansion that fills or crosses the “void” of unknowing or nescience. The experience

of duality is the void that separates ipseity from Aseity. This condition obscures the

possibility of transcendence or spiritual liberation in Metaseity through savikalpa and

nirvikalpa samādhi. During savikalpa samādhi, meditators discover their oneness

with Aseity’s infinite vibrations. This is the spiritual equivalent to quantum

entanglement, as there is no difference between the center and the periphery. Aseity’s

thought vibrations do not arise from above, below, internally, or externally but

everywhere simultaneously, making polarities like “up or down” irrelevant during

this spiritual state.

The last line of the fifth verse, “There was infinite potentiality and causality;

there was independent thought (existence) below (within) and infinite surrender

beyond,” amplifies the idealist metaphysics developed by the previous stanzas. For

the first time, an intellectual and spiritual understanding of causality and surrender

become accessible to the sage who melds their consciousness with Aseity. They

become aware of the latter’s limitless causality springing from some intuited “infinite

potentiality.” This macrocosmic view flows through the intuition that “independent

thought” is the cause of microcosmic existence and that liberation is possible through

“infinite surrender” of the self to Metaseity. Remarkably, the sage must even

relinquish the bliss of contact with Aseity if they are to finally eliminate their illusory

independence from Metaseity. When this ultimate liberation is achieved, the

cessation of mind is equivalent to the melting of the iceberg. This is Tantra’s

nirvikalpa samādhi, or asamprajñāta samādhi. It is the actualization of an infinite

monistic state beyond mind and existence or nonexistence.

6. िो अदधा वद ि इह पर वोचतकत आजाता ित इयी कवसकटः | अवामगदवा असय कवसजमननाथा िो वद यत आबभव ॥६॥ kó addhā veda ká ihá prá vocat, kúta ājātā kuta iyáṃ vísrṣṭiḥ.

arvāg devā asyá visárjanena, áthā kó veda yáta ābabhūva.

Who [consciously] knows this way, who now can explain it? Where was this creation

generated?

The gods followed creation; so who can truly know its cause?

13 See my “Siva Tantra Rediscovered: Transforming the Etic Routes and Emic Roots of Indian

Spirituality” in Roots, Routes and a New Awakening for a detailed discussion of the etymology and definition of Śiva Tantra.


While the fifth verse evokes Tantra’s meditative praxes, the sixth espouses an

admirable philosophical skepticism. The ancient poet-sage challenges the Vedic

episteme by admitting to uncertainty regarding this new monistic idealism, evidenced

by the first line’s query as to who knows or can explain from where creation arises.

The greatest deviation from the RV’s ecumenical fideism appears in the second line’s

proclamation that “the gods followed creation”—so who can speak to its cause?

Instead of deferring to the Vedic religion’s polytheistic universe, filled with the

elemental deities of wind, fire, and other phenomena, X.129 calls on its ancient and

modern listeners to ponder the highest ontological mystery. Most significantly, by

negating the Vedic gods’ primacy, the poet establishes the earliest reference to the

idealist monogenesis that shaped several thousand years of Indian spiritual

philosophy in the Brahmanical traditions that adopted Metaseity under various names.

7. इयी कवसकटयमत आबभव यकद वा दध यकद वा न | यो असयाधयकषः परम वयोमनतसो अङग वद यकद वा न वद ॥७॥

iyáṃ vísrṣṭir yáta ābabhūva, yádi vā dadhé yádi vā ná. yó asyādhyakṣaḥ paramé víoman, só aṅgá veda yádi vā ná véda.

Whatever the cause of this manifestation [consciousness/Metaseity?], whether it was

produced or not; the great witness of this cosmos knows, or maybe does not…?

Jamison and Brereton point out that the seventh verse has an unusual stylistic

break from the RV’s other hymns with its final hanging question: “This creation—

from where it came to be, if it was produced or if not—he who is the overseer of this

(world) in the furthest heaven, he surely knows. Or if he does not know . . . ?” (1609).

They argue that “if thought is the ultimate and primal creative act, the origin of the

world is still unknown, even by the gods,” and as there is no “answer, . . . ‘thinking’

will not come to an end” (1608). This appraisal is notably idealist because thought is

involved in the act of creation, but the identity of the thinker is left uncertain. Is it the

gods, the poet, or Metaseity itself? The preceding verses have left no rational space

for an argument that human thought can be the ultimate cause of creation, so we can

reasonably posit that Aseity is the thinker responsible for creating the cosmos.

Nevertheless, their position that thinking will not come to an end fits well with

Tantra’s understanding that Aseity generates the seemingly endless manifestation of

temporal and spatial dimensions, thereby avoiding infinite regression. The stanza’s

closing aphasic statement comes full circle with the first verse’s enigmatic

conceptualization of a state transcending existence and nonexistence. The possibility


of any intellect, even one as vast as Aseity, to comprehend the ultimate infinite “cause

of this manifestation” is left undecided. It serves as a reminder for countless

generations of Indian philosophers that no intellect can fully comprehend the truth of

ultimate reality. And while I have pointed out that Indian traditions generally accept

Metaseity as the ontogenetic essence and reject an endless series of causal agents,

X.129 ends provocatively with the statement that the “great witness of this cosmos”

might not understand creation or its own infinitude.

Concluding Remarks

The complex issues of the RV’s origin and meaning have long plagued

Indologists, but X.129 has proved most vexing, as its philosophy differs radically

from the preceding propitiatory hymns. Emic thinkers like Sarkar and academics who

consider the existence of proto-Tantric traditions hold to the view that the

prehistorical Aryans entering India encountered indigenous meditative praxes in the

form of Śiva Tantra. The latter’s monistic and idealist elements began to influence

the Vedic religion and vice versa. As these oral traditions intermingled, Aryan

migration generated conflict but also a fusion of ideas; thus, the RV’s composers

began to consider indigenous ideas. Moreover, Vedic ritualism might also have been

cause for discontent amongst its less privileged followers, who became increasingly

aware of the power wielded by the priestly classes. Perhaps some of the latter may

also have sought deeper knowledge and found themselves drawn towards the spiritual

meditations of Tantra-Yoga. The possibility for such intermingling is far higher than

not. Stated baldly, I argue that X.129 is likely the first record we have of an idealist

ontological inquiry and that it reflects elements of the little-known parallel

indigenous Tantric culture. This undeveloped dimension of comparative Indological

research is important if we are to interpret the trajectory of Indian philosophy as a

movement from the dogma of the Vedas to the spiritual idealism that pervades Śiva

Tantra, Vedānta, and other traditions.

The Creation Hymn is overwhelmingly important in the philosophical and

literary development of idealism. No survey of idealism is complete without

considering it and its possible impact on ancient Greek and Chinese thought. There

is massive scope for further comparative studies into the potential links between

Indian idealism, Daoist, and ancient Greek thought. Not many scholars have taken

up this task, and even fewer have analyzed X.129, which, as I have discussed,

demands the researcher simultaneously juggle linguistic meaning and obscure


esoteric metaphysics. No interpreter comes out of the effort flawlessly, but each

attempt may bring us closer to its original spiritual ontology.

Finally, Sarkar and other emic sources proclaim Indian metaphysics to be the

product of Śiva Tantra and commentary on the RV, which together situate truth

“throughout the classical literature” in the principle guiding force of dharma

(nature/path) on the journey to spiritual “transcendence” (Shulman 21). While early

Vedic beliefs centered on sacrificial propitiation not philosophy, my examination of

current Indological research and reinterpretation of the Creation Hymn apropos

Tantric metaphysics is the first Tantric-Vedic exploration of the ancient oral and

textual traditions. It has addressed the Indian origins of monistic idealism by

demonstrating that X.129 is the first record of Indian idealism that likely reflects

Tantric soteriology. As it stands, the hymn is either a journey into the mind of an

ancient poet-sage struggling to communicate an ontological inquiry unlike anything

else in the RV—or it symbolizes protean Tantric idealism. I suggest the Creation

Hymn is both. It is the oldest representation of India’s spiritual quest to discover

Metaseity through meditation and to philosophically question those experiences.

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About the Author Justin M. Hewitson is an Associate Professor in the Education Center for Humanities and

Social Sciences at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. He teaches comparative

literature and philosophy on Indo-Sino-Western thought. His publications include essays on

Husserl’s Phenomenology and P. R. Sarkar’s Tantra (Comparative and Continental

Philosophy), American Transcendentalism and Romanticism (Wenshan Review), and Indian


spirituality and mediating suffering in Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost (Comparative Literature and

Culture). He has published two book chapters. The first explores the history of Śiva Tantra,

the second considers happiness and religious Pragmatism in the Peterson-Žižek debate in

terms of Tantric soteriology.

[Received 9 August 2020; accepted 1 February 2021]

tantric metaseity in the rig veda’s “creation hymn”

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