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

॥ 6.4.18 ॥

Rice with meat, for a renowned son

अथ य इच्छेत् पुत्रो मे पण्डितो विगीतः समितिंगमः शुश्रूषितां वाचं भाषिता जायेत सर्वान् वेदाननुब्रुवीत सर्वमायुरियादिति मांसौदनं पाचयित्वा सर्पिष्मन्तमश्नीयाताम् । ईश्वरौ जनयितवै । औक्षेण वार्षभेण वा ॥

In transliteration

atha ya icchet putro me paṇḍito vigītaḥ samitiṃgamaḥ śuśrūṣitāṃ vācaṃ bhāṣitā jāyeta sarvān vedānanubruvīta sarvamāyuriyāditi māṃsaudanaṃ pācayitvā sarpiṣmantamaśnīyātām | īśvarau janayitavai | aukṣeṇa vārṣabheṇa vā ||

In English

Now he who wishes that a learned son be born to him, renowned, a frequenter of assemblies, a speaker of words men long to hear, that he study all the Vedas and live out his full span of life, should have rice cooked with meat, and the two of them, with clarified butter, should eat it. Then they are able to beget such a son, the meat being that of a young or of a full-grown bull.

In plain words

A man who wants a learned, famous son, at home in assemblies, whose speech people are eager to hear, who will master all the Vedas and live his full lifespan, should have rice cooked with meat, the meat of a young or a grown bull, and he and his wife eat it with ghee; then the two are able to conceive such a son.

All mantras