Gita Rahasya -Tilak 268

Gita Rahasya -Tilak


My readers will have understood from what has been, stated above, how the tradition of Spiritual Knowledge, which is the root of the science of Release, has come to us in an unbroken line from the Upanisads right upto Tukarama. But, in order to impress on my readers that this knowledge had come into existence in our country even before the date of the Upanisads, that is to say, already in very very ancient times, and that the ideas in the Upanisads have gradually grown from those times, I shall give here, before concluding, a well-known hymn (sukta) from the Rg-Veda, which is the foundation even of the Spiritual Knowledge in the Upanisads, together with its Marathi translation. Not only do we not come across in the scriptures of any religion, critical philosophical ideas, as to what the unknowable Fundamental Element of the Cosmos must have been, and how this variegated visible universe sprang from it, which are as comprehensive, independent and root-touching as those in this hymn, but no one has yet come across any text replete with such Spiritual Knowledge, which is equal to it in "point of antiquity. Therefore, many wonder-struck Western scholars have translated this hymn into their various languages, looking upon it as important, from the point of view of religious history, for showing how the natural tendency of the human mind runs beyond the Name-d and Form-ed universe to reach the permanent and unimaginable Brahman-Energy which is beyond it. This hymn is the 129th hymn in the tenth mandala of the Rg-Veda, and is known as- the 'Nasadiya-Sukta', having regard to its commencing words.

And this Sukta has been adopted in the Taittiriya Brahmana ( 2. 8. 9 ), and the description given in the Narayaniya or the Bhagavata religion in the Mahabharata as to how the universe was first created by the desire of the Blessed Lord has been, based on this hymn [1]. According to- the general index ( sarvanukramanika ), the Rsi of this hymn is Paramesthi Prajapati, its deity is the Paramatman, and it consists of seven stanzas ( rca ) in the tristup metre, each stanza containing four lines of eleven words each. As the words, sat and asat, have a double meaning, the difference of opinion among the writers of the Upanisads, as regards- describing the Fundamental Element of the world as ‘sat’, which has been referred to earlier in this chapter, is also to be found in the Rg-Veda. For instance, this Fundamental. Cause of the world is in some places described by saying "ekam sad vipra bahudha. vadanti" [2], or " ekam santam bahudha kalpayanti" [3]— that is, "It, being one. and sat ( i. e. lasting for erer ), has been given different names- by people "; whereas in other places, it has been described by saying: "devanam puruye yuge 'satah sad ajayata" [4], that is, "the sat, that is, the perceptible universe, came into existence out of the asat, that is, the Imperceptible, even before the gods had come into existence."


References And Context

  1. ( Ma. Bha. San. 342. 8 )
  2. ( Rg. 1. 164. 46 )
  3. ( Rg. 10. 114. 5 )
  4. (Rg. 10.72. 7)

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