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

॥ 6.4.25 ॥

Speech in the newborn's ear

अथास्य दक्षिणं कर्णमभिनिधाय वाग्वागिति त्रिः । अथ दधि मधु घृतं संनीयानन्तर्हितेन जातरूपेण प्राशयति । भूस्ते दधामि भुवस्ते दधामि स्वस्ते दधामि भूर्भुवः स्वः सर्वं त्वयि दधामीति ॥

In transliteration

athāsya dakṣiṇaṃ karṇamabhinidhāya vāgvāgiti triḥ | atha dadhi madhu ghṛtaṃ saṃnīyānantarhitena jātarūpeṇa prāśayati | bhūste dadhāmi bhuvaste dadhāmi svaste dadhāmi bhūrbhuvaḥ svaḥ sarvaṃ tvayi dadhāmīti ||

In English

Then, putting his mouth to the child's right ear, he says three times: speech, speech. Then, mixing curds, honey, and clarified butter, he feeds the child with gold that is not held back from touching, saying: I place the earth in you; I place the mid-region in you; I place the heaven in you; earth, mid-region, and heaven, I place all of it in you.

In plain words

He puts his mouth to the newborn's right ear and says speech, speech, three times. Then he mixes curd, honey, and ghee and feeds it to the child with a piece of gold touching the food, reciting: I place bhuh in you, I place bhuvah in you, I place svah in you; earth, sky, and heaven, I place all of it in you.

All mantras