Rig Veda Creation Hymn

When I first read this piece, I was confused and uncomfortable. When reading something, especially a work titled “Creation,” the reader expects to be given the answer(s). Instead the hymn goes on and on and on with remarks and questions that contradict and negate each other such as: “there was neither non-existence nor existence then.” The whole text presents the reader with questions and no answers, and that made me uncomfortable. However when I re-read the hymn, multiple times might I add, I found some clarity.

 

Upon reading the work over I realized the narrator did have the answer to some things, but they did not have every answer or the detailed answers that I desired. The narrator somehow knew that the non-existence/existence was layers upon layers of darkness and that it was water. Whereas the rest of the piece is questioning, the statement: “darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning; with no distinguishing sign, all this was water,” was very clear. The discomfort around this declarative statement is that previously we were told that there was no non-existence nor existence, but here the narrator is painting a clear picture of the beginning.

 

I finally became comfortable when the narrator claimed, “the gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.” I completely understood what the narrator meant here. As a religious person who also believes in science, I accept evolution but I can also understand those who believe God created the world. In terms of the amount of time Earth has been developing, our evolution is but a blip in that timeline, therefore it is possible that for a higher being 7 days was an appropriate time to create a world. However a higher being’s 7 days might be billions of years to us mortals.

 

If the narrator believes in a god, then I don’t think they meant that people created gods, rather that humans understanding of gods came after our creation. For example, The Holy Bible is said to have been written by Jesus’s disciples. It is not that the disciples made God up, but that they were able to understand his existence through Jesus Christ and able to write down his teachings. I’m assuming that the narrator means that the knowledge of gods came after creation because now humans exist to know of the Gods.