Prajāpati lay with his eyes closed. Between head and breast an ardor burned within him, like water seething in silence. It was constantly transforming something: it was tapas. But what was it transforming? The mind. The mind was what transformed and what was transformed. It was the warmth, the hidden flame behind the bones, the succession and dissolution of shapes sketched on darkness — and the sensation of knowing that that was happening. Everything resembled something else. Everything was connected to something else. Only the sensation of conseriousness resembled nothing at all. And yet all resemblanees llowed back and forth within it. It was the “indistinct wave.” Each resemblance was a crest of that wave. At the time, “this world was nothing but water.” And then? “In the midst of the waves a single seer.” Already the waters were the mind. But why that eye? Within the mind came that split that precedes all others, that implies all others. There was consciousness and there was an eye watching consciousness. In the same mind were two beings. Who might become three, thirty, three thousand. Eyes that watched eyes that watched eyes. But that first step was enough in itself. All the other eyes were there in that “one seer” and in the waters.
The waters yearned. Alone, they burned. “They burned their heat.” A golden shell took shape in the wave. “This, the one, was born from the strength of the heat.” And inside the shell, over the are of a year, the body of Prajāpati took shape. But “the year didn’t exist” then. Time appeared as the organ of a single being, nesting inside that being, who drifted on the waters, with no support. After a year the being began to emit syllables, which were the earth, the air, the distant sky. Already he knew he was Father Time. Prajāpati was granted a life of a thousand years: he looked out before him, beyond the cresting waves, and far, far away glimpsed a strip of earth, the faint line of a distant shore. His death.
Prajāpati was the one “self-existing” being, svayaṃbhū. But this did not make him any less vulnerable than any creature born. He had no knowledge, didn’t have qualities. He was the first self-made divinity. He didn’t know the meters, not in the beginning. Then he felt a simmering somewhere inside. He saw a chant — and finally let it out. Where from? From the suture in his skull.
Born of the waters’ desiring, Prajāpati begat “all this,” idaṃ sarvam, but he was the only one who couldn’t claim to have a progenitor — not even a mother. If anything he had many mothers, for the waters are an irreducible feminine plural. The waters were his daughters too, as though from the beginning it was important to show that in every essential relationship generation is reciprocal.
The mind: a flow restricted by no bank or barrier, crossed by flashes that fade away. A circle would have to be drawn, a frame, a templum. “Settle down,” Prajāpati told himself. But everything pitched about. “Need a solid base,” pratiṣṭha, he said. “Otherwise my children will wander around witless. If nothing stays the same, how can they ever calculate anything? How can they see the equivalences?” As he was thinking this, he lay on a lotus leaf, delicate and flimsy, blown along by the breeze, which was himself. He thought: “The waters are the foundation of all there is. But the waters are the doctrine too, the Vedas. Too difficult. Who of those to be born will understand? Need to hide, to cover at least a small part of the waters. Need earth.” In the shape of a boar he dove into the deep. Surfacing, his snout was smeared with mud. He began to spread it out on the lotus leaf, with loving care. “This is the earth,” he said. “Now I’ve spread it, I’ll need some stones to keep it still.” He disappeared again. Then he arranged a frame of white stones around the now dry mud. “You will be its guardians,” he said. Now the earth was taut as a cowhide. Tired as he was, Prajāpati lay down on it. For the first time he touched the earth. And for the first time the earth was burdened with a weight.
The dried slime covering the lotus leaf set in a thin layer. Yet it sufficed to give some impression of stability. The white stones sketched out an enclosure, allowed one to get one’s bearings. It was this, more than anything else, that was reassuring, that invited thought. Beneath, immediately beneath, flowed the waters, as ever.
While Prajāpati’s back lay glued to the earth, time stretched out within him. One by one, his joints were coated, inside and out, by a corrosive patina: past and future.
In his solitude, Prajāpati, the Progenitor, thought: “How can I reproduce?” He concentrated inside, and a warmth radiated from within. Then he opened his mouth. Out came Agni, Fire, the devourer. Prajāpati looked. With his open mouth he had created, and now an open mouth was coming toward him. Could it really want to eat him, its own creator, so soon? He couldn’t believe it. But now Prajāpati knew terror. He looked around. The earth was bare. Grasses, trees, they were only in his mind. “So who can it want to eat? There’s no one but me,” he repeated. Terror left him speechless. Then Prajāpati knew the first anguish and the first doubt. He must invent a food for the creature he had made if he wasn’t to end up in Agni’s mouth. Prajāpati rubbed his hands together to conjure up an offering. But all that appeared was some soggy stuff, matted with hairs. Agni wouldn’t want that. He rubbed his hands together again — and out came a white, liquid substance. “Should I offer it? Or maybe not?” thought Prajāpati, paralyzed by terror. Then the wind rose and a light filled the sky. Agni devoured the offering and was gone.
Prajāpati sensed he had a companion, a “second” being, dvitīya, within him. It was a woman, Vāc, Word. He let her out. He looked at her. Vāc “rose like a continuous stream of water.” She was a column of liquid, without beginning or end. Prajāpati united with her. He split her into three parts. Three sounds came out of his throat in his amorous thrust: a, ka, ho. A was the earth, ka the space between, ho the sky. With those three syllables the discontinuous stormed into existence. From eight drops were born the Vasus, from eleven the Rudras, from twelve the Ādityas. The world, which didn’t yet exist, was already full of gods. Thirty-one born from as many drops, then Sky and Earth: which made thirty-three. Plus there was ka, the space between, where Prajāpati was. Thirty-four. Silently, Vāc slipped back into Prajāpati, into the cavity that was ever her home.
When creating the gods, Prajāpati decided to issue them forth into this world because the worlds below, in the depths of the sky, were pitted and impracticable as a dense thicket. The earth had the advantage of being insignificant. Everything still to be built. There was a clearing — and the wind whistling through empty space.
But no sooner had they appeared than the gods were gone. To seek the sky? They took no notice of the Progenitor. They turned their backs on him at once. The earth was just a point of departure, beneath consideration, a desolate way station. Prajāpati was left behind, alone again, last not first. Something held him back, something still there waiting for him: Mṛtyu, Death. One of his own creatures.