Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣadबृहदारण्यक उपनिषद्

Khila Kanda. Adhyaya 6, Brahmana 4. Conception, birth, and the rites of begetting

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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.

Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.

Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.

Before you read

This is a frank and difficult passage, the rites surrounding union, conception, and the begetting of a child, set down in full with the candor of an ancient ritual that reads the act of generation as a sacrifice and surrounds it with prayers and blessings for the wished-for child. One of its lines, the seventh mantra, gives an instruction about a husband overcoming a wife's refusal, and it must be named for what it is: an instruction of coercion, of sexual violence against a woman. We condemn it without reserve. Nothing in Vedanta, in its own age or in ours, makes such an act anything but wrong, and we do not stand by this instruction in any degree. Scholars read these lines in more than one way, as the praise-language of an old rite rather than a literal command, as bearing the marks of a world long gone, and no living teacher treats them as a standing instruction. We keep the words on the record because a library that quietly erases its own hard pages tells a lie about the past, not because they hold one grain of authority we accept. What is shown here is shown to be seen and reckoned with, never to be obeyed.

Reveal this passage

॥ 6.4.12 ॥

A rite against a wife's lover

अथ यस्य जायायै जारः स्यात्तं चेद्द्विष्यादामपात्रेऽग्निमुपसमाधाय प्रतिलोमं शरबर्हिः स्तीर्त्वा तस्मिन्नेताः शरभृष्टीः प्रतिलोमाः सर्पिषाक्ता जुहुयात् । मम समिद्धेऽहौषीः । प्राणापानौ त आददेऽसाविति । मम समिद्धेऽहौषीः । पुत्रपशूंस्त आददेऽसाविति । मम समिद्धेऽहौषीः । इष्टासुकृते त आददेऽसाविति । मम समिद्धेऽहौषीः । अशापराकाशौ त आददेऽसाविति । स वा एष निरिन्द्रियो विसुकृतोऽस्माल्लोकाद्प्रैति यमेवंविद्ब्राह्मणः शपति । तस्मादेवंवित्श्रोत्रियस्य दारेण नोपहासमिच्छेत् । उत ह्येवंवित्परो भवति ॥

In transliteration

atha yasya jāyāyai jāraḥ syāttaṃ ceddviṣyādāmapātre'gnimupasamādhāya pratilomaṃ śarabarhiḥ stīrtvā tasminnetāḥ śarabhṛṣṭīḥ pratilomāḥ sarpiṣāktā juhuyāt | mama samiddhe'hauṣīḥ | prāṇāpānau ta ādade'sāviti | mama samiddhe'hauṣīḥ | putrapaśūṃsta ādade'sāviti | mama samiddhe'hauṣīḥ | iṣṭāsukṛte ta ādade'sāviti | mama samiddhe'hauṣīḥ | aśāparākāśau ta ādade'sāviti | sa vā eṣa nirindriyo visukṛto'smāllokādpraiti yamevaṃvidbrāhmaṇaḥ śapati | tasmādevaṃvitśrotriyasya dāreṇa nopahāsamicchet | uta hyevaṃvitparo bhavati ||

In English

Now if a man's wife should have a paramour whom he hates, let him set a fire in an unbaked clay vessel, spread out reed arrows in reverse order, and offer in that fire these reed tips smeared with clarified butter, in reverse order: you have sacrificed in my kindled fire; I take away your in-breath and out-breath, you, so-and-so. You have sacrificed in my kindled fire; I take away your sons and cattle, you, so-and-so. You have sacrificed in my kindled fire; I take away your sacrifices and good deeds, you, so-and-so. You have sacrificed in my kindled fire; I take away your hopes and prospects, you, so-and-so. He whom a Brahmin who knows this curses departs from this world impotent and stripped of merit. Therefore one should not seek union with the wife of a learned Vedic scholar who knows this, for one who knows this becomes superior.

In plain words

If a man hates his wife's lover, he lights a fire in an unbaked clay pot, lays reed arrows down backward, and offers their ghee-smeared tips into the fire in reverse, reciting after each that he takes from the lover, by name, his breath, then his sons and cattle, then his sacrifices and merit, then his hopes. The man cursed by a knower of this leaves the world depleted and merit-poor. So one should never seek union with the wife of a learned man who knows this, because such a knower comes out on top.

All mantras