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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.
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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
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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.
Justin M. Hewitson 25
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.
26 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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.
Justin M. Hewitson 27
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.
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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
Justin M. Hewitson 29
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
30 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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.
Justin M. Hewitson 31
“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
32 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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.
Justin M. Hewitson 33
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).
34 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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).
Justin M. Hewitson 35
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
36 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
“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.
Justin M. Hewitson 37
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
38 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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.
Justin M. Hewitson 39
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).
40 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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
Justin M. Hewitson 41
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.
42 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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.
Justin M. Hewitson 43
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.
44 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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
Justin M. Hewitson 45
“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.
46 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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
Justin M. Hewitson 47
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
48 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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
52 Concentric 47.1 April 2021
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]