Long before the Upaniṣads turned inward toward the nature of ātman and brahman, the Vedic seers were already asking some of the most fundamental questions of philosophy: What existed before the world? How did existence arise? Was there a beginning at all? And can the human mind ever know the origin of creation?
These questions appear with remarkable intensity in the later hymns of the Ṛgveda, particularly the Nāsadīya Sūkta (Ṛgveda 10.129), the Hiraṇyagarbha Sūkta (Ṛgveda 10.121), and the Puruṣa Sūkta (Ṛgveda 10.90). They do not provide one uniform cosmological theory. Instead, they preserve different ways of approaching the mystery of existence.
The most radical of these is the Nāsadīya Sūkta. Its opening verse refuses even the categories with which ordinary thought begins: “nāsad āsīn no sad āsīt tadānīṃ
“Then there was neither asat nor sat”. There was neither what we call existence nor what we call non-existence. There was no sky, no atmosphere, and no familiar cosmic framework. The poet asks: what covered everything? Where was it? In whose protection? Was there unfathomable water? (Ṛgveda 10.129.1).
The hymn then moves beyond ordinary physical description. There was no distinction between night and day, no death and no immortality. Yet there was “That One” (tad ekam), described as breathing without breath, through its own inherent power (svadhā) (Ṛgveda 10.129.2). From this mysterious primordial condition arises kāma, desire or the first impulse, described as the primal seed of consciousness (manaso retaḥ prathamaṃ) (Ṛgveda 10.129.4).
The extraordinary character of the hymn lies not merely in the questions it asks, but in its refusal to close them. The final verse asks who truly knows from where creation arose. The gods themselves, it says, came after the emergence of the world. And the one who surveys creation from the highest heaven—perhaps he knows, perhaps he does not (Ṛgveda 10.129.6–7).
This is not simply scepticism. Nor should it be forced into the modern category of agnosticism. The hymn is better understood as an exercise in metaphysical humility: the mystery of existence may exceed the categories through which human beings attempt to explain it.
The Hiraṇyagarbha Sūkta approaches the same mystery differently. Here the hymn speaks of Hiraṇyagarbha, the “Golden Embryo,” as the primordial principle associated with the emergence and sustaining of the cosmos (Ṛgveda 10.121). Rather than beginning with the negation of familiar categories, it presents a first cosmic principle from which the manifested order becomes intelligible. The hymn repeatedly asks: “To which god shall we offer?” (kasmai devāya haviṣā vidhema). The question gradually turns the search for cosmic origin into a search for the supreme principle worthy of yajña.
The Puruṣa Sūkta offers yet another vision. Here the cosmos is imagined through the Puruṣa, the Cosmic Person, whose vast being encompasses everything that has existed and will exist (Ṛgveda 10.90.1–2). The universe emerges through the primordial yajña of this cosmic being. Creation is therefore not represented merely as the manufacture of objects, but as a sacred transformation in which the One becomes the many.
These hymns should not necessarily be treated as contradictory scientific explanations of creation. They are different poetic modes of philosophical contemplation. The Nāsadīya approaches existence through questioning; the Hiraṇyagarbha through primordial unity; the Puruṣa through cosmic sacrifice and manifestation.
This plurality is itself philosophically significant. The Vedic tradition does not appear troubled by preserving more than one vision of origins. It allows mystery to remain mystery while continuing to inquire into it.
The later Upaniṣadic questions therefore did not emerge in an intellectual vacuum. When the Upaniṣads ask “What is brahman?”, “What is the ātman?”, or “From what has this universe arisen?”, they inherit a much older Vedic impulse: to move beyond appearances and ask what makes existence possible in the first place.
The Vedic quest begins, therefore, not with certainty but with wonder. Its deepest philosophical gesture may be precisely this willingness to ask a question so fundamental that even an answer must remain open to questioning.
