If you guys find this hymn, please let me know. It's my favorite, and the
pages where it should be are missing from my copy of the tenth mandala. a
Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Oct 30, 2007, at 6:07 PM, Rick Archer wrote:
A friend wants to know:
Do you have a copy of the 10th Mandala? I'm looking for a hymn that describes
creation there, how from nothing came something "that one unbreathed upon
breathed of his own strength" or something like that. Is there anyway you could
help me locate that hymn?
I apologize for interjecting your direct question, but this is a favorite of
mine. Years ago, I corresponded briefly with Jean Le Mee, then a prof. at
Cooper Union in NYC. It's one of those verses, esp. in the original Sanskrit,
that you could read every day, for a lifetime. Here's what he says--and what
inspired me to call him in the first place, his translation of the Nasadiya
Sukta, the "Hymn of Creation", the connection between later advaita vedanta and
an imagined Vedic pedigree (RV X.129):
"Perhaps no other Vedic hymn equals in depth and majesty this famous Hymn of
Creation known to tradition as the Nasadiya Sukta, from its opening words. Its
seer, Prajäpati Parameshthin, Supreme Lord of Creatures, chants in the
"triplepraise" meter his knowledge and his wonder as he recalls his vision and
in these seven immortal mantras seven like the days of creation plants the
seeds of Vedic metaphysics and mathematics. For this hymn, besides being a
cosmogony, is also a beautiful meditation on the properties of numbers from one
to nine and zero. As the Vedanta philosophy was to develop it later in great
detail, and as other traditions also record, the process of creation can be
seen as ninefold, each step, each state of consciousness, being characterized
by the properties of a particular number. Thus, creation begins in the
Absolute, the one without a second, "where neither nonbeing nor being was as
yet." Then duality creeps in, darkness conceals darkness. And so it all
begins. In the fifth stanza is a brilliant example of the mathematical and
structural symbolism alluded to in the introduction. The vertical and crosswise
directions indicated give in words the substance of a sutra yielding a general
and elegant method of multiplication and division while keeping the orders
separate the very mechanism of creation itself. It reveals the inner properties
of five, the number for man, but also for the manifestation of creation in the
major traditions. Was it not on the fifth day that, according to Genesis, "God
created great whales ... and blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply. .
."? Pure coincidence? Hardly, when we know with what care the Vedic poets con
structed their hymns. And then, what of this other coincidence that we find
with Dante's Paradiso In virtually the same words as Prajapati Parameshthin,
the Prince of Poets sings:
Order was created and together with it Were woven the substances; Those formed
the summit of the world In which pure act was produced. Pure potency held the
lowest place, In the midst, potency twisted such a mighty bond With act, as
shall never be severed.
That line, that ray of glory that the wise stretched between the Will on high
and the Potency beneath, that mighty bond, scales all the states of being,
uniting in its reach the whole creation.
Yet, from where does it all spring? Who truly knows?"
Jean Le Mée "Hymns From the Rig-Veda".
If you guys like I can post the translation. It's quite beautiful. The earlier
work I understand, has been re-issued.
-Vaj
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