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Rig Veda · 966 of 1027
Mandala 10: HYMN CXXIX. Creation.
1.THEN 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?
2.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.
3.Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4.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.
5.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 up yonder
6.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?
7.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 he knows not.
Asked of Guide
Why does the hymn end by saying even the first-born god 'perhaps he knows not'?
The hymn walks from nameless non-existence through Desire to the birth of the One and then asks who caused it. By placing the possibility that “perhaps he knows not” about the first origin, the rishi leaves creation as an open mystery rather than a tidy myth, honoring uncertainty after intense inward search.
This move echoes philosophical caution in the Upanishads, especially the Aitareya and Brihadaranyaka, where sages accept limits to speculative knowledge. The poem treats knowledge earned by inner seeing as authoritative, while ultimate origins remain beyond confident assertion.
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