Rig Veda: Creation

Within my very first read, the Creation Hymn was very confusing for me. While the wording of this text wasn’t difficult, it was definitely the context as well as its concept that brought confusion to me. My first thought when reading it was: “What’s this poet babbling on about?” However, once I gave this reading a second chance and separated it into its verses and read them individually, it slowly began to make sense. The first thing that I had noticed was the poets very consistent contradicting statements. At first, there was “Neither non-existence nor existence” (verse 1, line 1), and then there was “neither death nor immortality” (verse 2, line 1). The biggest contradiction I noticed was this idea of existence; first, from verses 2-5, the poet gives this brief idea of how the world came into existence- then concludes on verse 7 that perhaps no one knows how the world came to be. Emotionally, I at first felt extremely confused by this text- mainly because I had no idea what the poet meant. Then, upon my second reading, the last verse truly stuck with me; this idea that there may not be a single being who knows the true origins of the world really opened up my eyes. In my life, I don’t think I’ve ever thought, “Hey, how was the world created? How did we come into existence?” But then this text made me aware of this concept- and not only that, but the fact that there’s a chance that no one will ever know. It will always be a continuous loop, if you think about it: if we claim the gods created the world, then who created the gods and how did they come to existence? Then how did who or what made them come into existence? In short, the Creation Hymn made me become more aware of this concept of existence and its unknown origin- and that’s a thought I’ll never forget.