Tad Ekam

(“That One”) Epithet used in Rg Veda
hymn 10.129, the so-called Creation
Hymn, to designate the first living being
on the earth. The four Vedas are the oldest Hindu religious texts, and based on
its style and content, the Rg Veda is the
oldest of the Vedas. Most of the hymns in
the Rg Veda are invocations addressed to
various divinities, sung to propitiate
these divinities so that human beings
may enjoy the good things of this life.
The Creation Hymn takes a far more
speculative tone, standing in marked
contrast to the confidence and optimism found in the earlier hymns. In the
Creation Hymn, the poet begins by
imagining a time before the existence of
Being and Nonbeing and speculates on
how the world came to be.
In the end, the poet ascribes all creation to a single impersonal agent, That
One (Tad Ekam). This hymn is noteworthy for ascribing the creation of the
world to a single power, an idea that
foreshadows the notion of Brahman in
the Upanishads, the speculative texts
that form the final stratum of the Vedic
literature. The name Tad Ekam, which is
grammatically a neuter noun, also foreshadows the notion found in the
Upanishads that Brahman is an impersonal force. After describing how That
One formed the cosmos and knew all its
secrets, the poem ends with the conjecture that perhaps That One may not be
omniscient and omnipotent after all.
This hymn thus further foreshadows the
Upanishads in its speculative tone and
its admission that the ultimate answer
may be unknown.