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

॥ 6.4.27 ॥

Given to the mother's breast

अथैनं मात्रे प्रदाय स्तनं प्रयच्छति यस्ते स्तनः शशयो यो मयोभूर्यो रत्नधा वसुविद्यः सुदत्रः । येन विश्वा पुष्यसि वार्याणि सरस्वति तमिह धातवे करिति ॥

In transliteration

athainaṃ mātre pradāya stanaṃ prayacchati yaste stanaḥ śaśayo yo mayobhūryo ratnadhā vasuvidyaḥ sudatraḥ | yena viśvā puṣyasi vāryāṇi sarasvati tamiha dhātave kariti ||

In English

Then, handing the child to its mother, he gives it the breast, saying: that breast of yours which is ever full, which gives joy, which bestows treasure, which finds wealth, which gives freely, by which you nourish all things worth desiring, Sarasvati, set it here for him to suck.

In plain words

Then he gives the child to its mother to nurse, reciting: Sarasvati, that breast of yours that is unfailing, gladdening, treasure-giving, wealth-finding, and generous, by which you nourish all good things, set it here for the child to suckle.

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