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Nasadiya:
The Creation Hymn of Rig Veda
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by Wendy Dongier O'Flaherty
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There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred?
Where?
In whose protection?
Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?
There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that there was nothing beyond.
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
The life force that was covered with emptiness,
that One arose through the power of heat.
Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
that was the first seed of mind.
Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
found the bond of existence and non-existence.
Their cord was extended across.
Was there below?
Was there above?
There were seed-placers, there were powers.
There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.
Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps even He does not know.
Translation by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. From the Book "The Rig Veda - Anthology"
Image (c) Gettyimages.com
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12-Aug-2010
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More by :
Wendy Dongier O'Flaherty
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1. I posted an enthusiastic note a few minutes earlier, for reasons stated. The subject must be studied. I will do so soon. My response concerns just the lines that are printed online. It does not refer to W.D. ʻO Flahertyʻs entire translation. This is my first encounter with her work (online, several lls.). Thank you!
2. This is to comment on Gora Mukherjeeʻs response. You are absolutely right.
The Hawaiian Dictionary by Pukuʻi and Elbert used all sources known in print, I imagine and believe, but mainly the authority of M.K. Pukuʻi, who was a researcher for the Bishop Museum for many years. She became the indigenous
"scholar" (a Western word for a non-Western knowledgeable source). She was an oral informer -- not the best speaker or researcher but one who learned the
scholarship ways of the West and came to accept that she was indeed more knowledgeable than certain others, who chance to be males. In her research, she learned more than any one person of any one locale and one lifetime, thus displacing the men who had been her genuine original sources. Insofar as the men as sources were attached to different chiefs and their respective island traditional accounts, they were the "Repositories of Knowledge." Today,their materials are mainly recorded through the agency of Mary K. Pukuʻi, notable for saying her mother taught her this and that. No woman could have known some of the things in such great detail as she implies her mother knew, for the scope of the data in time, space, and persons whose resources they were are too great. But researchers today do not know that.
And so the original accounts are lost, truly, in ways that actually men were trained to know them as professional Repositories serving their particular High Paramount Chiefs. One researcher, Theodore Kelsey, an American who was raised in Hawaiʻi since aged 2 (1880ʻs) and spent most of his adult life
in the field gathering records and writing them down, specifying names of the
informants, residences, birthplaces, and gender, shows how such accounts can make a difference. The womenʻs information follows the general rule of
what females are allowed; likewise for the men; and in matters of great importance especially if death is involved, like going to war, or healing the sick, etc., in general the men were the greater among the numbered practitioners and resources. So it is important to understand the difference.
Pukuʻi did not make up the rules of her centrality as mouthpiece for the Bishop Museumʻs indigenous scholarly cultural and historical knowledge; but those that did are not the ones who are today being noted for having done contemporary Hawaiian researchers a great disservice. Which is not to say that women did not know what they knew but to say in traditional societies like the Indian and the Hawaiian (which is an Indo-Pacific language descendant), males dominated and the information often comes out closer grained, larger scoped, deeper time depth, more multiple alternatives, and involving greater numbers of people and groups, i.e., leaderships of more kinds by tradition. That is because Hawaiian was always an oral language until the missionaries arrived in 1821. Sanskrit is in a much happier place, fortunately. I am so pleased to see the work now produced. Thank you!
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What a find! What an amazing happenstance to find a translation of the Rig Veda that shows, as I suspected for over two decades, thanks to Mary Carroll
Smithʻs Harvard Ph.D. The Rig Veda: the Song of Indiaʻs Sacred Text. many
affinities and suggestions of correspondences in the much later Hawaiian oral classic He Tumulīpō ordered by King Kalākaua for transmission into writing from the oral for the Austrian anthropologist Adolf Bastian, tr. Martha W. Beckwith He Kumulipo: a Creation Chant, This is absolutely amazing! I must put out my
paper on the Theodore Kelsey, Henry Kekahuna and Fred Beckley and indigenous scholarsʻ collaborativeʻs work on He Tumulīpō. My paper is in a journal I founded precisely for this kind of return, cyclable information known to exist but that is to me, in the middle of the Pacific, coming from "out of the blue." My paper is in J. Hawaiian and Pacific Folklore and Folklife Studies, Kamaluʻuluolele Publishers/ University of Hawaiʻi, Leeward, 2v., 1991, 1992. . . .But first I must read the remainder of your papers (and I must get your book!). Please keep coming! And mahalo pumehana. Oia iʻo nō! -L.A.P.
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Excellent work. Compels me to read and reserach more on the Vedas.
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Not about this particular piece.Wendy's scholarship and knowledge of Sanskrit is well known.But I think she should confine herself to the job of a translator and not venture into some thing like an "alternative history" of Hinduism.I was highly disappointed with this book which,appears to have been a sponsored writing.She hurriedly glosses over the fundamental part of the development of Hindu philosophical thought-The Vedas,and Upanishads,busy as she is chasing an imaginary ghost-The Male Brahmin.If you leave out the Brahmins,whatever their later misdeeds and greed
might have brought embarrassment to many of their present day caste mates,you are left with practically nothing to write about!How did they memorize thousands and thousands of lines of prose and verses for over a thousand years,with correct phonetic notes! I am surprised that a translator of "Kamsutra" did not appreciate a society where even a courtesan could enjoy not only acceptance but even respectability and royal patronage.Women's sexual needs and various erotic arts to satisfy them were put down explicitly.Compare this with any other civilization,ancient or modern.Your book is a highly prejudicial views.You even point out that Alexander is not considered in India"that great after all".What a come down from Maxmuller
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