The Creation in Rig Veda 10:129

A Synthesized Version of the Hymn

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Seven English Versions of Rig Veda 10:129

Synthesized
After examining seven major translations of Rig Veda 10:129, I need to compose a
synthesized version of the hymn based on them, before moving on to making
suggestions about how it might be interpreted. So, here is the hymn as I perceive
it.

As implied by my comments on the seven English versions presented on this website,

parts of the hymn are uncontroversial with very similar interpretations from all the seven
translators, whereas other parts are much more complicated. A pattern emerges, but I
return to that later.

Below is my synthesized sketch of the hymn, where I have tried to give it as much
clarity as possible. Mainly but not always, I have followed the majority of the seven
translators where that could be calculated, but also I have allowed myself some
freedom where I felt it was called for in seeking out what the poet of the hymn is most
likely to have intended.

Of course, since I am not an indologist my choices are based on other things than any
profound knowledge of the original poet's context. Apart from the arguments of the
translators, I have mostly considered the hymn's inner logic and my understanding of
patterns in creation myths as well as ancient cosmogonic thought.

I will discuss my choices below. Here is my synthesized version of the Rig Veda 10:129
creation hymn:
Rig Veda, Mandala 10, hymn CXXIX. Creation.
Nasadiya Sukta ("Not the non-existent")

1
There was neither existence nor non-existence then.
There was neither sky nor heaven beyond it.
What covered it and where? What sheltered?
Was there an abyss of water?

2
There was neither death nor immortality.
There was nothing telling night from day.
The One breathed breathless autonomously.
There was nothing else.

3
There was darkness concealed in darkness.
All was water without shape.
The One enclosed in nothing
Emerged by the power of heat.

4
First to arise was desire,
The primal seed of mind.
Wise poets searching their hearts
Found the bond between existence and non-existence.

5
That cord was stretched across.
What was above and what below?
Seeds were shed and mighty powers rose.
Below was urge, above was will.

6
Who knows and who can here tell
Whence it all came, whence is this creation?
The gods came later to this world.
So who knows whence it came?

7
Whence this creation came,
Whether he made it or not,
The overseer of it in the highest heaven,
Only he knows it. Or doesn't he know?
First Verse Choices
As for the first verse, its content is not that controversial. The seven translators differ
only in minor details, not in the general statement of the verse. Mainly, they describe the
yet non-existent cosmos in different terms.

They all make it clear that both references in the second line are to celestial
components. They just name them differently. The hymn suggests that there are two
levels of the celestial yet to be created. I choose the words sky and heaven, in the hope
of giving the impression of one layer closer to earth than the other. That's what the
hymn specifies quite clearly, whatever English words we use.

Nothing else in this verse causes any great conflict between translations.

Second Verse Choices

Also regarding the second verse, the seven translators pretty much agree. Their choice
of words may vary, but not really so that they alter the meaning of the verse. Therefore,
I had no trouble finding a straightforward way of writing it, which I trust that none of the
seven translators would disapprove, at least not with any emphasis.

Everyone except Joel P. Brereton chooses immortality as the opposite to death. He

calls it deathlessness, which is interesting in its much more limited assumption, but I go
with the majority. Furthermore, it is very likely that the poet expected the audience to
think about mortal earthly beings on one side and immortal divine creatures in heaven
on the other.

As for night and day in the next line, A. L. Basham has explicitly mentioned the light (in
the form of a torch), since that is what makes day emerge. The others haven't, but talk
about the lack of a sign or indication. Anything specific would assume more of the
cosmology than what seems appropriate at this time in the hymn.

There was no sign of either night or day, but the hymn doesn't seem to venture into
what that sign would be, specifically. So, I don't specify it. But the text of the hymn
indicates that this obscurity is in the perspective of a potential (but non-existent)
observer. So I implied it.

The line where the One is introduced causes some problems for the translators, but
they mainly agree on what is stated also in my synthesized version. The One breathed
without air, since that was yet to be created, and did so without any outer means.

I know the term "autonomously" lacks the ancient flavor, but I chose it to avoid
specifying gender. Although the One is later described as male, it doesn't really apply to
the chaotic state before creation commences and the One is awakened to become self-
aware.
Third Verse Choices
In the third verse, the seven translators agree pretty much about the first two lines, but
not so with the following two. That's when creation commences, which is a vastly
important moment - especially in this poem, with its punch line of that being hidden to
all.

It's not even so that all the translators specify the role of the One in this, though it still
might be implied. Max Müller talks about a germ, H. H. Wilson about a united world and
Ralph T. H. Griffith a unit. Still, it's safe to say that they all refer to the mysterious One
mentioned already in the second verse of the hymn.

The translations divide as to what makes creation begin. Most of them say that heat got
the process going, but Wilson suggests austerity. Griffith says warmth, which is just
heat with a milder choice of word. As for how they form this sentence, none is identical
to the other.

In spite of these differences, what is described is quite the same - with the possible
exception of Wilson. Creation begins with a rise of temperature. That may be
symbolical, but the text hints nothing of it.

My problem was with the word "emerged." I considered an awakening, since that seems
to be what the One goes through, but it would presuppose too much. The seven
translators have different solutions: "burst forth," "produced," "born," "came into being"
and "arose." I did not want to use the concept of birth, since the One is said to already
exist in some way or other - even breathing. It is an awakening, but without any support
from any one of the translators, I had to settle for emerge.

Fourth Verse Choices

Desire as the primary force of creation is uncontroversial. Only Müller chooses another
word, love, which is probably just in an effort not to challenge the prude ideals of his
time. As for the seed in the second line, it's the choice of five translators. Joel P.
Brereton uses "semen" instead, which is probably quite correct. Again, the other
translators may have wanted to soften the sexual innuendo.

I stick with seed, not only because of the majority of translators, but to avoid gender
specifics at this stage. The verse describes desire as the first seed of mind. The
metaphor of a seed of mind makes more sense as a starting signal to the growth of a
whole world, than semen of the mind would.

The latter would suggest self-fertilization, like that of Chepre in an Egyptian creation
myth. But the One of Rig Veda 10:129 is a different creator, triggered by desire to move
from a vague passive existence into action. The One's creation is more of an outward
activity than Chepre's inward fertilization.
 Indra. Gilt bronze, Nepal 18th century.

As for the poets of the next line, four of the translators chose "sages" instead. Joel P.
Brereton points out that the Sanskrit word indicates not just any poets, but those with
profound understanding. So, "wise poets" is a way of combining those traits.

It is interesting that these poets searched their hearts. That might be a Western
interpretation, since our tradition gives the heart a role rightly belonging to the brain. We
have seen it as the seat of moral, courage, compassion, and so on. We still use the
heart as a symbolic home of such things.

That might have influenced the translators in their choice, but all seven do the same, so
it must be well-founded. Also, the Western tradition is far from the only one giving the
heart credit for things of the brain. That is probably due to its tendency to change the
frequency of its beats when we are overcome by some sentiments.

The last line of the fourth verse has created some diversity among the translators. Most
of them describe a link between what is and what is not, albeit with slightly differing
wordings. But three of them - Macdonell, Doniger and Brereton - describe existence as
if it was contained within non-existence. That could be implied by "darkness concealed
in darkness" of the third verse, existence as a hidden potential inside non-existence, but
I find it unlikely.

The dynamics of creation described by the hymn is a process where opposites have to
appear and take shape, since one cannot exist without the other. Neither existence nor
non-existence is possible without its counterpart. That would be the bond between
them, and that makes the world take form, as stated in the first line of the fifth verse.
Fifth Verse Choices
All translators except Müller choose the expression "their cord" in the first line of this
verse. That makes it unclear if the poets or the two opposites of existence and non-
existence are intended. I have no doubt that the latter is what the poet intended. To
avoid misunderstanding, I write "that cord."

The bond between existence and non-existence is a cord extending through an

emerging cosmos, as the opposites manifest themselves by the necessity of their
interdependent opposition. Surely, that's a division into heaven and earth, which is what
almost every creation myth describes.

So, what was above and what below was no real mystery to the original audience of this
hymn. But the question is not just rhetorical. It points out the many remaining mysteries
regarding the heavenly as well as the earthly, also in particular the uncertainty of their
roles in the continued process of creation. It's no wonder that the translations of this
verse differ quite a lot.

They are all rather clear about some kind of fertilization taking place between the above
and the below, where the former must surely be the seed and the latter the womb. But
in describing the characteristics of those two, the translations diverge - even
contradicting each other.

The hymn describes both as powers, not necessarily one superior to the other. I call the
upper one "will," since the hymn seems to see it as the initiator. It is, after all, the seed. I
call the lower one "urge," because several of the translators indicate that the hymn
allows it some say in the process, not just being a passive receiver. It engulfs the seed
from above and uses it in the following procreation. The below has an urge to take part
in creation.

Sixth Verse Choices

The complications of the fifth verse are gone when the sixth is reached. There is wide
consensus among the translators as to how to word it and what it means. The poet
suddenly interrupts the narration of creation and returns to the question asked in the
beginning: who can really say what happened?

The word "here" points out an audience to the poet in a now setting. Five of the seven
translators use it. So do I, since it points out so clearly that the poet brings the audience
back to the present, far away from the distant moment of creation. Here and now,
instead of back then, who can say what happened? The shift of perspective makes the
question even more mind-blowing.

The use of "this creation" in the next line has a similar function. It points to the
contemporary observers of the world they live in.
My problem with this verse is a minor one - the word "creation." All the seven translators
use it. Actually, six of them do it twice. What makes me hesitate to use this word is all
that it implies, such as an active and intentional process of making the world, which in
turn also suggests a maker. We should not jump to the conclusion that all this is what
the poet had in mind.

I checked the Sanskrit word (at spokensanskrit.de) and there is no doubt that "creation"
is a proper translation of it. But the Sanskrit word (visrsti or visarashti) also means:
offspring, emission, offering, discharge, letting go, quitting, leaving, allowing to flow,
production, and giving. So, it seems to have other connotations than the divine magic of
making the world appear, as we tend to see it in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Sanskrit word suggests a creation process similar to feeding: once the world is fed
it pretty much takes care of its own continued evolvement and multiplying. As implied by
the fifth verse, the creation in Rig Veda 10:129 is one where both the above and the
below are active. Maybe the latter soon takes over the process, whereas the above is
reduced to a passive source of energy for it. That's quite different from the Genesis I
and II descriptions of creation, where god is the only one making things happen for quite
a while, until every creature on earth has been produced.

As for the second use of the word "creation" in this verse, the translators vary. Müller
puts it in the fourth line and five others in the third. Griffith uses synonyms. That gave
me the freedom to avoid it completely. The third line simply states that the gods were
introduced later, when there was already a world or cosmos of sorts. The fourth line
refers back to the second line and it makes sense that the wording is at least similar.
This is the choice of most translators.

It is also the way the seventh and last verse starts.

Seventh Verse Choices

There is even less controversy among the translators about the last verse of Rig Veda
10:129 than there is about the previous one. They all come quite close to one another in
the wording and definitely so on what is implied.

It starts with the same enigma by which the sixth verse ended. Where did it all come
from? As for the overseer in the highest heaven, the hymn doesn't state so firmly but it
makes sense that it is the One of previous verses.

Then it is confusing that the One as the creator is put to question. Wasn't that already
determined by the third verse? Actually not. The One is the first to emerge, but the
following verses don't specify this being's active role in creation. It seems almost to
happen by itself, at least to begin with.

So, this question in the last verse is not completely out of the blue.
What the hymn ends by concluding is that not even the very first being to appear is sure
to know how it happened. This punch line, certainly the main reason for the poet to write
this hymn, has to end with a question mark. Only one of the seven translators, Joel P.
Brereton, does so.

He even uses a triple-dot ellipsis to stress the paradox more, which is fine by me. The
only reason I don't do the same is that it's such a modern technique. It becomes odd as
the last sentence of a 3,000 years old hymn from India. But I bet that the poet had a
similar effect in mind when writing the last line - probably giggling when doing so.
The Creation in Rig Veda 10:129
Conclusions about the Hymn

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Some Conclusions about Rig Veda 10:129

The Rig Veda 10:129 creation hymn may very well be the most famous of all the
Rig Veda hymns, at least internationally. It is regarded as obscure, although its
punch line is quite obvious. Here are some conclusions I make after studying the
aforementioned seven English versions of it.

The hymn starts by stating that not even nothing could have existed before the world
emerged. Therefore it can't come as a surprise that the hymn ends by suggesting that
no one can know how the world was created.

No one born out of the creation can know what that primordial state was like. According
to the hymn, it's not even sure that its maker - if there is one - can know it. That's almost
saying there wasn't a maker, since a conscious creator must have known.

Like Big Bang

This would be very much in line with our present understanding of the birth of our
universe in the Big Bang, where also the time we experience started. So there was no
before, really, and therefore nothing to be known about it. And certainly, the Big Bang
theory leaves no room for a conscious creator.

But the Rig Veda 10:129 hymn was composed some 3,000 years ago. At that time, in
India as well as anywhere else, the idea of a creation without a creator would be very
radical, if not absurd.

Well, that's what we surmise about our ancestors. Upon close examination, it's not only
this Rig Veda hymn of that distant past seeming to consider the idea of a creation
without a conscious and active creator.

Already primordial man, back at the dawn of our species as we know it, must have
found many things in nature happening without any sign of someone making it so.
People back then would not have regarded natural events as some sort of machinery,
before we were able to invent our own. But a world where much happened without any
willful interference must have been possible for them to conceive. That might even have
been what they regarded as the normal state of things.
It is not at all unthinkable that the personification of natural forces into some hidden
deities, of which mythologies are full, was introduced later in human history. If so, it was
probably as a way of trying to deal with the unpredictable strikes of fate. The belief in
deities led to worship of them, which was to quite an extent an effort of pleasing them
and thereby fate.

Be that as it may, and we can only guess about it, but Rig Veda 10:129 can certainly be
interpreted as suggesting a creation by impersonal forces. It even says that creation
was inevitable, because of the primordial state being impossible.

That's announced already in the first line of the hymn. There was neither existence nor
non-existence, which is impossible. So, both had to appear. Something had to exist in
order for nothing to exist as well, and vice versa. A state with none of them just could
not be. The world burst out of necessity.

How Can the Poet Know?

So, the first statement about the impossible primordial state fits nicely with the ending
statement about nobody knowing of the world's origin. It's the stuff in between that
complicates things, for the simple reason that it describes what has been declared
indescribable.

The hymn says that not even the gods can know how the world emerged, since they
were not there at the very beginning. Not even the overseer in the highest heaven - the
god of gods, so to speak - is sure to know. So how can the poet?

Why does the hymn spend several verses describing the process leading to the creation
of the world, when it has also stated that this cannot be known by anyone - certainly not
a mere mortal? This contradiction within the hymn is as grave as can be, since it strikes
at both its outset and its final punch line.

Would any poet make such a blunder?

I see two plausible explanations: Either we misinterpret the content of the hymn
completely, or it has been altered since its original writing.

Misunderstanding
Starting with the first possibility, can we misunderstand the poet's claims so
fundamentally - and if so, what part of it do we get wrong? Is he not at all claiming that
the way the world emerged is beyond anyone's knowledge, or is his description of that
emergence not what it seems to be?
The former alternative is not that likely at all, since the whole point of the hymn is its
punch line statement about nobody knowing how the world emerged. Without it, the
punch line loses its punch and the hymn its meaning.

Furthermore, we have no problem seeing and appreciating the paradox of an uncreated

world neither being nor not being. It's not a primordial state easy to imagine, but it's very
easy to see how it must be beyond anyone's understanding. Both the poet and his
audience would enjoy it and regard it as the hymn's major quality.

Indra. Bronze scupture from Nepal, 20th century.

So, could the hymn's description of how the world emerged be something else than
that? A simple explanation would be that it starts when the world creation is well on the
way and at least the One has awakened and can witness it. But that's sort of a post-
creation, another time than the moment of which the hymn makes its paradoxical
statements. Why would the poet make conclusions about one event and still spend
verses describing another event?

Also, the text of the hymn firmly suggests that the description is indeed that of the very
beginning of creation, before which there was only an impossible chaos.
Primordial Mystery
The only thing that would make some kind of sense is if the hymn doesn't claim that
creation is incomprehensible, but the primordial state before it began. That is the
situation described by the first lines of the hymn, until the One is introduced in the
second half of the second verse. Or, if we accept the idea of the One belonging to the
primordial state, all the way until the last line of the third verse, where heat makes the
One emerge.

That's a possible solution to the problem. The poet claims that we know how the world
was created, but not out of what - not what was before it.

That's sort of the same problem as we have with the Big Bang theory, unable to
describe what preceded the Big Bang and where that might have been - or not have
been. A modern astrophysicist would totally get that message of the hymn and agree
with it. It also touches the problem the philosophers of Ancient Greece discussed quite
a lot: if something can come out of nothing.

It makes perfect sense if the poet claims that nothing can be known about the world
before its emergence. As soon as the world started to emerge, though, its process
would be traceable - at least in theory.

Modern astronomy has a similar limit at 10-43 seconds into Big Bang, before which it is
very hard or impossible to speculate about its properties (the Planck epoch). After that
very short period of time, the universe started to behave in a fashion orderly enough for
calculations to describe it well.

The punch line of the Rig Veda hymn might be about what was before creation, not
during it. Would that be a possible interpretation of the Sanskrit text?

There is nothing contradicting it in the first five verses. As for the remaining two, it is a
bit unclear but the translations actually open for this interpretation.

In the sixth verse, only one of the seven translators, A. L. Basham, writes "how creation
happened." All the others use the word "whence," from where, which does point to the
primordial state being the mystery, and not the actual process of creation. So, six out of
seven versions indeed point to this understanding of the hymn.

The seventh verse refers back to the sixth verse as to what the question is. Therefore, it
conforms just as well to this interpretation.

So, indeed, it is quite possible to interpret Rig Veda 10:129 as stating that nothing can
be known about the universe before its creation, whereas a lot can be concluded about
how the creation played out.

Then the content of the hymn can be described like this:

What was before the world emerged is impossible to know. Here is how the world
emerged from that mystery - but again, what was before is impossible to know.

We can all agree to that.

Later Additions
Another possibility is that the hymn has been edited since its original writing, by others
than the original poet. That would easily enter contradictions. Some aspects of the
hymn indicate it.

Already when I started studying the Rig Veda 10:129 hymn, I was wondering about the
clarity of its beginning and end, versus the complications in between. As mentioned
above, the beginning and the end conform to the thesis that nothing can be said about
the creation of the world. Still, the middle verses outline that creation, as if the poet
knows it well.

I have also noticed in the seven English translations treated on this website that they
mainly agree on the beginning and end of the hymn, but vary much more regarding the
middle, almost as if wrestling with another text. It seems that the Sanskrit original has a
clarity in the first and last verses that is obscured by the other ones. That does suggest
the possibility of some tangling with the hymn, after its original composition.

Furthermore, there are some obvious contradictions appearing in the middle of the
hymn. The most blatant one is about the primordial abyss of water. The first verse
questions if there was such a thing, but the third verse states firmly that it was there.

The presence of the One is a similar anomaly. In the total primordial nothing, can there
really be a One, who is even breathing albeit breathlessly? The One is introduced in the
second half of the second verse, as a creator to be. But except for being awakened by
heat and feeling desire, the One plays no obvious role in the creation of the world. That
seems to happen out of its own necessity, whether desired or not.

The One - or anyone else - as a world creator is questioned in the seventh verse, and
the sixth says categorically that none of the gods existed at the time when the world
started to emerge.

It should also be noted that the overseer in the highest heaven, mentioned in the
seventh verse, is not necessarily the same as the One. Probably not, or the same term
would be used for that being.

There is also an odd shortness to the description of the world creation, as if intended to
be more elaborate at the outset, but then stopping short and returning to the statement
that nothing can be said about it.
Indeed, the middle of the hymn has several inconsistencies compared to the beginning
and the end.

Edited to Conform
It would not be too hard to explain why such editing took place, if that is the case. The
hymn's beginning and end almost give an atheistic sense in their absence of gods. This
would provoke anyone confessing to a world run by deities. That was surely the case
with most people of ancient India, at the time of this hymn's writing. Maybe even more
so, later on.

When there is a pantheon and the worship of it, there are strong forces in that culture
working to conform it to that belief. Hymns of the Rig Veda would be targets of this,
certainly a hymn ignoring the role of the gods in the very creation of the world.

Joel P. Brereton gives an example of addition to Rig Veda 10:129 in his text on this
hymn (p. 258f), presented on this website. There is a Sanskrit version where two verses
have been added after the seventh, elaborating on specific divine activity in the creation
of the world. So, what's to say it has not happened to the seven verses we regard as the
original Rig Veda 10:129?

The extant copies of the text are far younger than the estimated period of its
composition. Many things can have happened to it through the many centuries between
its writing and our oldest copy of it.

Actually, there could very well have been some editing of it already when it was entered
into the Rig Veda collection, so that it would conform to the other hymns as well as to
the cosmological beliefs of those putting together the collection.

The Hymn Stripped Bare

If we edit out any description of the process of creation, including the role of the One,
what remains of the Rig Veda 10:129 hymn is this (in my synthesized version):

There was neither existence nor non-existence then.

There was neither sky nor heaven beyond it.
What covered it and where? What sheltered?
Was there an abyss of water?
Who knows and who can here tell
Whence it all came, whence is this creation?
Whether he made it or not,
The overseer of it in the highest heaven,
Only he knows it. Or doesn't he know?
The third, fourth and fifth verses, describing the emergence of the world, are removed.
So is the second verse, because it made statements about the primordial state, as
opposed to the open questions of the first verse. That seemed both out of place and
repetitious.

I also removed the mentioning of gods in the sixth verse as well as the repetition of the
question of its first line in the fourth. That made the first sentence of the seventh verse
redundant, too.

So, what is left is the complete first verse, half of the sixth and all but the first line of the
seventh verse.

I don't know what this does to the meter and poetic form of the hymn in Sanskrit, but this
sharply shortened version makes a lot of sense in English. Its beginning explains the
paradox of the primordial state, which makes it impossible to describe it - or even in
what way it would lead to the emergence of the world. And that leads directly to the
punch line ending of the hymn.

As far as I can see, this or something like it could very well be the original content of the
hymn, before pious scholars felt the need of adding a cosmogony fitting their own
conviction.

Both Alternatives Plausible

So, which one of the above alternatives is the likely explanation to the inconsistencies of
the Rig Veda 10:129 hymn? Should its message be understood as only the primordial
state being beyond understanding even to the mightiest of deities, or has its
inconsistencies entered with verses added by others than the original poet in their effort
to make it conform to their thoughts?

It could be both.

Since only one of the seven examined English translations disproves the former
alternative, there is good reason to accept it. The hymn as we know it today points out
that it is not creation that is hidden in impenetrable mystery, but whatever preceded it.
Not how creation happened, but out of what.
 Indra. Gilt copper sculpture from Nepal, 1462.

That would be enough to explain the hymn if it weren't for the remaining contradictions I
have mentioned above. Those contradictions are to be found in the part of the text
describing the process of creation. This theme is awkward in a hymn with the punch line
of Rig Veda 10:129, so it does seem out of place. Why bother with a description of the
creation process in a hymn about the complete enigma of whence creation came? And
when doing so - why the contradictions?

So, it is quite plausible that the hymn has been altered not only once and not only by
one editor. Either that or a sloppy poet did a poor job with the first and only alteration.
Two Creation Stories
There does seem to be two partly contradicting narrations of the creation colliding in this
hymn. Furthermore, those two fragments of creation fit two separate types of creation
myths that have many examples around the world.

The first fragment of a creation story is that about the One, who is awakened by heat
and immediately feels desire. The desire for company, surely, and the desire to change
the original chaos into a decent habitat. That motivation in a primordial creator deity is
found in many myths.

A good example of this kind of creation is the Xingu myth, also presented on this
website. In the beginning, according to the Xingu Indians, there was only Mavutsinim,
who was all alone. He turned a shell into a woman and mated with her. But when she
bore him a son, he left with the boy. The woman cried and turned back into a shell.

Something similar is to be found in Genesis II of the Bible, where god creates Adam and
Eve and all the animals, filling the Garden of Eden - not unlike a child playing with a
dollhouse.

Both creation myths suggest a world creator acting to get out of his loneliness. The One
of Rig Veda 10:129 is similar, having desire immediately on becoming aware. In this
mood, the One would surely hurry to create company.

But nothing is mentioned of that. Instead, the Rig Veda hymn shifts to another
perspective, where the One is absent.

An Impersonal Creation
The second fragment of a creation is quite different in nature. It is impersonal, with the
bond between existence and non-existence causing a cord to divide the primordial
chaos into an above and a below. This is rather abstract, but again not that far from the
cosmogony of several other creation myths. Ancient cosmological myths are far from
only filled with spectacular deities acting from very human incentives.

It also has to be remembered that many deities in old mythologies are representatives
of natural forces. So, even a creation story full of active deities can be seen as forces of
nature causing this and that to happen, without any initial conscious will to dictate it.

This possibility must be considered also regarding the One of Rig Veda 10:129. The
mysterious primordial being, described so sparsely, could very well be the
personification of a natural force, or a certain characteristic the primordial state must
have in order for the world to emerge from it. Aristotle would say that the primordial
state would need to contain a cause, or there would be no effect of it. The One is hinted
as the primal cause leading to creation, to be compared to Aristotle's unmoved mover.
This ancient way of reasoning deserves another example, which is that of the sun. Its
effect on earthly life is obvious and abundant. Mythologies turning it into a divine
creature with its own eventful past must have come much later than mankind's
awareness of the sun and the effects of its light. Also the worship of it must have been
something evolving by time, maybe at first as little more than what we do when we greet
the morning and hope for sunshine.

Most deities in most if not all mythologies are linked to natural forces, celestial bodies
and so on. They are symbols of these natural phenomena. Often in the myths their
adventures represent natural events in an effort to explain them, or maybe just to play
with them.

Comparing again to the Bible, Genesis II explains how the serpent lost its arms and
legs, so it had to crawl forever on its belly.

Mythologies are full of such explanations, and so are folk tales of much later origin. We
should not take for granted that these stories already at their invention were firmly held
beliefs. Many of them could simply be playful figments of the imagination, pure
entertainment not meant to be taken seriously. Nocturnal storytelling by the fire.

Ancient Abstractions
Of course, there was also a search for explanations of the world and all its phenomena.
Where did it come from and why did things behave as they did? These questions often
found answers proving advanced abstract thinking, such as that of the world emergence
in Rig Veda 10:129.

I would say that abstract conceptions of the world creation are likely to be older than
those involving deities and other characters, simply because the latter indicate further
developments of the story. But there is no consensus about it among researchers of
myth. A widespread assumption for the last two hundred years of the study of myths
has been that the more personal the forces at work are, the older the myth is. I seriously
doubt that.

As for Rig Veda 10:129, I would be inclined to regard the more abstract second
fragment of creation to be the older one, and the short part about the One being of later
invention. Whatever the case, let's have a look at what the abstract version has to say.

Creation and Procreation

The Rig Veda hymn speaks of a bond between the existent and the non-existent, a cord
stretched out dividing the world into an above and a below. Seeds were shed, most
likely from above, and thereby mighty powers arose below. The dynamics between the
above and the below is described as will in the former and urge in the latter, though the
translators have used widely different expressions.
This short sketch of creation is quite recognizable. It compares well to many other
creation myths. That is what should be expected, for the very simple reason that it is
mainly the same world observed and the same ignorance of the scientific facts we have
piled up during the last few centuries. Ancient people speculating about something as
distant as the creation of the world were not thinking that very differently, at least not
beneath the complexity of developed mythologies.

The division into an above and a below is found just about everywhere. It is also
something any human being could easily observe. Heaven and earth. The former
nourishing the latter is also familiar and explained already by the obvious influence of
the sun and the rain. Ancient man was well aware of earthly dependence on heavenly
forces.

But anyone could also see that earth contained powers of its own. There was the mighty
sea, there was procreation continuously going on among plants and animals. The spark
of existence may have come from the above, but its continued process was something
mainly handled by all the creatures of the below. It's the difference between creation
and procreation. So, the initiative was from above, but the urge to continue was below.

What little is described by this fragment of creation in Rig Veda 10:129 would have
made much sense to ancient man also outside India. What it describes is just the very
start of creation. This short hymn would lose its character if it elaborated on what
happened next. Also, its punch line would soon become irrelevant.

Either the original poet of the hymn realized this and stopped short, or a later editor of
the text settled for just adding the minimum of a creation process deemed necessary.
My guess is the latter.

Three Poets
So, to sum it up: I suspect that Rig Veda 10:129 is not a hymn composed in its entirety
by one poet, but the work of three.

The initial text would be the hymn's beginning and end, declaring that the primordial
state before creation was so absurd that it cannot be understood by anyone - not even
by the creator of the world, if there was one. Another poet added the lines about the
One, implied to be the creator of the world, probably to conform the hymn to the
cosmological belief of that poet. A third poet had an alternative view on creation, seeing
it as an impersonal process out of necessity, and made that addition to the hymn.

The third poet's addition could very well have been made before the lines about the
One. The abstract thinking of that addition is much more in line with the original poet's
perspective - so much that I would even consider the possibility that those lines were
also written by the original poet.
What sticks out the most is the part about the One. That implies a primordial and
superior deity, which would explain why a later editor felt the need to include it. It would
be an editor worshipping that deity.

We have many examples of such revisions of old myths. It happened in Enuma Elish,
presented on this website, where the Babylonian god Marduk was replacing older ones
as the highest deity and also given a prominent role in the creation. Something similar
was done with Yahwe in the Bible, doing away with the pantheon of older gods in the
Middle East.

India, with its great complexity of deities and myths as well as its long history of thought,
must have several examples of the same. Rig Veda 10:129 is likely to be one of them.