Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣadबृहदारण्यक उपनिषद्

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

New to these pages?

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

॥ 6.4.2 ॥

Prajapati makes a place for the seed

स ह प्रजापतिरीक्षां चक्रे हन्तास्मै प्रतिष्ठां कल्पयानीति स स्त्रियं ससृजे । तां सृष्ट्वाध उपास्त । तस्मात्स्त्रियमध उपासीत । स एतं प्राञ्चं ग्रावाणमात्मन एव समुदपारयत् । तेनैनामभ्यसृजत ॥

In transliteration

sa ha prajāpatirīkṣāṃ cakre hantāsmai pratiṣṭhāṃ kalpayānīti sa striyaṃ sasṛje | tāṃ sṛṣṭvādha upāsta | tasmātstriyamadha upāsīta | sa etaṃ prāñcaṃ grāvāṇamātmana eva samudapārayat | tenaināmabhyasṛjata ||

In English

Prajapati reflected: come, let me make a resting place for this seed. So he created woman. Having created her, he revered her below. Therefore one should revere woman below. He drew out from his own self that stone which presses forward, and with it he begot upon her.

In plain words

Prajapati thought, let me make a home for the seed, and so he created woman. Having made her, he honored her in union; this is why a man should honor woman in union. From his own body he brought forth the begetting organ and with it generated offspring in her.

All mantras