Even God may NOT know!

Skepticism, Atheism and Agnosticism are integral parts of Hinduism – this is one of the biggest reason that Hinduism appeals to me. That it is not based on faith, but is founded on logic and reason.

It leaves me spellbound that the last line of a very famous hymn in the Rig Veda, popularly known as the Creation Hymn says that even the Purusha’s knowledge may be bound.

Is it not only reasonable that when we speculate about creation and weave the most plausible theory with one major assumption which is that Purusha exists, we should also give way to the argument that It may not exist – for, after all, it is only our assumption.

This is what an easy translation of the last few verses of the hymn states:

THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart’s thought discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.

Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder

Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?

He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

Hymn CXXIX – translated by Griffith.

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Tags: Philosophy