THEN there was neither existence nor non-existence then; there was no air, no sky either beyond that.
What covered it all, and what made it shelter? Was there water there, immeasurable depths of water?
Death was not yet, nor was there anything immortal; no day or night had yet appeared.
That One Thing, without breath, breathed by its own nature; apart from it, nothing else existed.
Darkness was there, all concealed in darkness; the All was formless chaos.
Then, formless, formless, formless, that One Thing was born; by the great warmth, it was born.
Desire arose at the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of spirit.
Sages who sought with their heart’s thought discovered the kinship between the existent and the non-existent.
Their division was transverse; what was above it, and what was below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free actions here and energies up yonder.
Who truly knows and who can declare it, how it was born and from where this creation sprang?
The gods came after this world was formed; who knows then from where it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye governs this world in highest heaven, he surely knows it, or perhaps he does not know.