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

॥ 6.4.28 ॥

A blessing on the mother

अथास्य मातरमभिमन्त्रयते इलासि मैत्रावरुणी वीरे वीरमजीजनत् । सा त्वं वीरवती भव यास्मान् वीरवतोऽकरदिति । तं वा एतमाहुः अतिपिता बताभूः । अतिपितामहो बताभूः । परमां बत काष्ठां प्राप श्रिया यशसा ब्रह्मवर्चसेन । य एवंविदो ब्राह्मणस्य पुत्रो जायत इति ॥

In transliteration

athāsya mātaramabhimantrayate ilāsi maitrāvaruṇī vīre vīramajījanat | sā tvaṃ vīravatī bhava yāsmān vīravato'karaditi | taṃ vā etamāhuḥ atipitā batābhūḥ | atipitāmaho batābhūḥ | paramāṃ bata kāṣṭhāṃ prāpa śriyā yaśasā brahmavarcasena | ya evaṃvido brāhmaṇasya putro jāyata iti ||

In English

Then he addresses its mother, saying: you are Ila, daughter of Mitra and Varuna; you who are full of heroes have borne a hero. May you be the mother of heroes, you who have made us rich in heroes. Of such a son they say: ah, you have surpassed your father; ah, you have surpassed your grandfather. He has reached the highest summit in splendor, in glory, and in spiritual eminence who is born as the son of a Brahmin that knows this.

In plain words

Finally he blesses the mother: you are Ila, child of Mitra and Varuna; rich in heroes, you have borne a hero; may you be a mother of heroes who has made us rich in them. And of the child they say: you have surpassed your father, you have surpassed your grandfather; the son born to a Brahmin who knows this reaches the very summit of splendor, fame, and spiritual power.

All mantras