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

॥ 6.4.20 ॥

I am he, you are she

अथैनामभिपद्यते अमोऽहमस्मि सा त्वम् । सा त्वमस्यमोऽहम् । सामाहमस्मि ऋक्त्वम् । द्यौरहं पृथिवी त्वम् । तावेहि संरभावहै सह रेतो दधावहै । पुंसे पुत्राय वित्तय इति ॥

In transliteration

athaināmabhipadyate amo'hamasmi sā tvam | sā tvamasyamo'ham | sāmāhamasmi ṛktvam | dyaurahaṃ pṛthivī tvam | tāvehi saṃrabhāvahai saha reto dadhāvahai | puṃse putrāya vittaya iti ||

In English

Then he approaches her, saying: I am he, you are she; you are she, I am he. I am the Saman, you are the Rk; I am heaven, you are earth. Come, let the two of us join together; let us lay down the seed together, for a male child, for a son, for the gaining of wealth.

In plain words

Then he comes to her with the mantra: I am ama and you are sa, you are sa and I am ama; I am the chant, you are the verse; I am the sky, you are the earth. Come, let us unite and place the seed together, to bring a male child, a son, and prosperity.

All mantras