---
type: Concept
bundle: cosmology-creation
bundle_version: "0.7.0"
id: nasadiya-sukta
title: "Nāsadīya Sūkta — नासदीय सूक्त"
iast: "Nāsadīya Sūkta"
devanagari: "नासदीय सूक्त"
description: "The Hymn of Non-Existence / Hymn of Creation (Ṛg Veda 10.129): the most philosophically radical of the Vedic cosmogonic hymns; it suspends all categorical answers about the origin of the cosmos and questions whether even the gods know how it arose; its final verse poses the possibility that even the one who oversees the cosmos from above 'may not know' -- making it a canonical ancient example of intellectual humility about first causes."
darshana:
  - Vedic
  - Vedānta
school_scope: "RV 10.129, 7 verses; among the most philosophically discussed Vedic texts in comparative philosophy; Advaita Vedānta cites it to support the ineffability of Brahman's relationship to the manifest world; the text resists sectarian appropriation precisely because it refuses categorical answers"
text_source: "Ṛg Veda 10.129 (7 verses)"
tags: [vedic, nasadiya, cosmogony, rig-veda, philosophical-inquiry, non-dual, avyakta]
not:
  - term: "proof that ancient Indians were agnostic / atheist"
    why: "The Nāsadīya Sūkta's final questioning verse ('Perhaps its overseer in the highest heaven knows -- or perhaps he does not know') is not a declaration of atheism or systematic agnosticism. It is an epistemological statement about the limits of cosmological knowledge even for divine intelligence. The hymn is profoundly theistic in context (it appears in the Ṛg Veda, addressed to cosmic deities); its questioning is philosophical humility, not denial of the divine."
  - term: "an ancient scientific theory of the Big Bang"
    why: "The Nāsadīya Sūkta is not a proto-scientific cosmology. Its opening (nāsadāsīn no sadāsīt -- 'Neither non-being nor being was then') is a philosophical statement about the state before the categories of existence and non-existence themselves arose, not a description of a physical vacuum state or pre-Big Bang singularity. The comparison is sometimes made because both involve 'nothing before something,' but the Nāsadīya is about ontological categories, not physical physics."
  - term: "nihilistic / saying nothing exists"
    why: "The opening verse is not nihilistic. 'Neither non-being nor being was then' is not a denial of existence but a statement that the pre-cosmic state transcends the binary of existence/non-existence. This is consistent with the Vedāntic concept of Brahman as sat-cit-ānanda -- which is pure being but not 'being' in the sense of conditioned existence, and not 'non-being' in the sense of nothingness."
related:
  - /concepts/avyakta.md
  - /concepts/srishti.md
  - /concepts/hiranyagarbha.md
  - /references/rigveda-nasadiya.md
timestamp: "2026-07-01"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Nāsadīya Sūkta -- नासदीय सूक्त

**Not:** proof of Vedic atheism, an ancient Big Bang theory, nihilistic denial of existence

## The Seven Verses: Structure

The Nāsadīya Sūkta (from its opening words: nāsad āsīn = "there was no non-being") proceeds in three movements:

**Verses 1-3: The Primordial Undivided State**
- "Then there was neither being (sat) nor non-being (asat)"
- "There was neither death nor immortality; no sign of day or night"
- "That one breathed, breathless, by its own power -- other than that, there was nothing whatsoever"
- "Darkness was hidden in darkness"
- "The undivided (aviśeṣa) was impelled by the power of tapas (intense heat / austerity)"

**Verses 4-5: The First Differentiation**
- "Kāma (desire / creative impulse) arose first -- the first seed of the mind"
- "The seers, searching within their hearts, discovered the bond between being and non-being"
- "Their rope stretched across: was there something above, something below?"

**Verses 6-7: The Epistemological Humility**
- "Who truly knows? Who here will proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation?"
- "The gods came later than this world's production -- so who knows whence it arose?"
- "That from which this creation arose -- whether it held it together or did not -- its overseer in the highest heaven -- perhaps he knows, or perhaps he does not know."

## The First Seed: Kāma

The emergence of Kāma (desire, creative will) as the "first seed of the mind" is one of the oldest attempts in any tradition to name the first principle of manifestation. In Vedāntic terms, Kāma here corresponds to Icchā-Śakti (the will-power that initiates Sṛṣṭi). This is not sexual desire in the ordinary sense but the primordial creative impulse -- the first stir of Avyakta toward manifestation.

This verse is the seed of a long philosophical tradition: what initiates the movement from Avyakta to manifest? The answers vary (Kāma, Icchā, Brahman's Śakti, the proximity of Puruṣa to Prakṛti in Sāṃkhya) -- but the Nāsadīya Sūkta is the first surviving text to pose the question as a question.

## The Epistemological Conclusion

The Nāsadīya Sūkta is unique in the Vedic corpus for its refusal to give a definitive answer. Verse 7 is the most radical: "Perhaps he [the overseer in the highest heaven] knows -- or perhaps he does not know." This is not cynicism but philosophical precision: the hymn recognizes that any being within the manifest cosmos -- even the highest deity -- is a result of the Sṛṣṭi process and therefore cannot have witnessed the state before Sṛṣṭi from outside. The question "what was before the beginning?" is, by definition, unanswerable from within the frame of what came after.

Advaita Vedānta's response is that Brahman as Nirguṇa (attribute-less, beyond subject-object) is the answer -- but Brahman cannot be "known" in the ordinary epistemological sense because knowledge requires a subject-object split, which Brahman transcends. The Nāsadīya's agnostic conclusion and Advaita's "neti neti" approach converge here.

## Audience Metaphor

The Nāsadīya Sūkta is asking: what did the room look like before anyone was in it to see it? Not "was the room empty?" (that still requires a seer to observe the emptiness) -- but "what was the state before any observation, any witness, any seer was possible?" The hymn concludes: this question may not be answerable by any being whose existence presupposes the room. The room came into being at the same moment as the seer; the pre-room state was neither the room nor its absence but something prior to the distinction itself.

## Citations

1. Ṛg Veda 10.129 -- the 7-verse Nāsadīya Sūkta; see references/rigveda-nasadiya.md
2. Compared with BhP 2.5-6 (the Purāṇic cosmogonic sequence that gives the definitive Vaiṣṇava answer to the Nāsadīya's open question); see references/bhagavata-purana.md
