Origin of Gods and Men in Rigveda

Origin of Gods and Men: A Rigvedic Apologia

The hymns of the Ṛgveda do not speak with the voice of dogma, but with the many-toned resonance of a civilization struggling to articulate its deepest intuitions about being. When the seers ask, “Whence came the gods? Whence came men?” their answers are not rigid formulations but inspired meditations. Unlike later Purāṇic traditions which delight in ordered genealogies and fixed pantheons, the Vedic imagination allows for multiplicity, paradox, and mystery. This very openness is its strength: the gods are not yet bureaucrats of heaven but living powers, born of waters, of non-existence, of the marriage of Heaven and Earth, or of the dawn herself. Such visions, far from primitive, reveal a spiritual daring that later systematization often obscures.

Birth of the Gods

One stream of thought in the Veda proclaims that the gods arose out of the asat, the “non-existent,” through the medium of the cosmic waters ^[1]. To the rationalist, this sounds like contradiction; to the Vedic seer, it is insight. For how else should being emerge except through non-being? Another famous hymn asserts that the gods themselves came only after the universe was already set in motion ^[2]. Here the Vedic poets invert the common religious instinct: the divine does not precede the cosmos but is born within it, just as fire emerges only when the sacrificial sticks are rubbed together. This is not a diminution of the gods but a profound declaration of their solidarity with creation.

Elsewhere the gods are the children of Dyāvā-Pṛthivī, Heaven and Earth—the primordial parents of all ^[3][4]. At times their origins are “triple,” drawn from Aditi, the waters, and the earth, a reminder that truth has more than one root. Secondary begettings abound: Uṣas, the Dawn, is hailed as mother of the gods ^[5], while Brahmaṇaspati ^[6] and Soma ^[7] are invoked as their fathers. Later Atharvavedic tradition even distinguishes “father-gods” from “son-gods” ^[8]. What the Purāṇas will codify into neat lineages, the Veda leaves fluid and alive.

The First of Men

In speaking of humankind, the Veda offers no less subtlety. Sometimes it is Manu Vaivasvata, the primal sacrificer, who stands as ancestor of our race ^[9], addressed with filial reverence as “Father Manu” ^[10]. At other times it is Yama Vaivasvata and his twin sister Yamī who bear the burden of first parentage. These twin myths are not contradictions but complementary archetypes: Manu represents the covenant of sacrifice, while Yama embodies mortality and the moral law. Beneath them lies yet another strand, tracing our origins to Vivasvat, who fathers the twins, with their “highest kin” said to be a celestial Gandharva and a water-nymph ^[11]. In these images we glimpse a truth denied by later literalists: humanity is at once terrestrial and celestial, descended from ritual, from death, and from the mingling of mortal with immortal.

Shared Blood of Gods and Men

The kinship of gods and mortals is never merely figurative. Agni himself is said to have begotten the offspring of men ^[12], while the semi-divine Aṅgirases are called his sons. Great families of seers—Atri, Kaṇva, and others—claim descent from divine unions ^[13]. Vasiṣṭha, one of the central figures of Vedic tradition, is not born of mere mortals at all but begotten by Mitra and Varuṇa upon the nymph Urvaśī ^[14]. Such myths insist that human lineage is never severed from divine lineage. The gulf between man and god is not absolute but bridged through fire, through vision, through the sacrificial bond. In this lies the secret of Vedic spirituality: the gods are kin, not just masters.

Rigvedic Vision versus Purāṇic Genealogy

When one turns from the Veda to the Purāṇas, one enters another world. The Purāṇic authors, writing in an age of empires and settled orthodoxy, sought to classify, to organize, to narrate history as orderly myth. The gods become functionaries, their births fixed, their roles codified, their quarrels moralized. In contrast, the Veda’s cosmos is still in formation: gods rise after creation, or from non-existence, or from Dawn. Humanity descends not from a single patriarch but from many sources—sacrifice, death, divine nymphs, the sun itself. To dismiss this variety as “confusion” is to miss its genius. The Rigvedic seers were closer to the raw mystery of being, and their hymns preserve that primordial awe.

Philosophical and Spiritual Meaning

To modern eyes, these myths may appear naïve. But in truth, they embody profound philosophical intuitions. That the gods arise from non-existence is a recognition of the paradox of being: existence itself is miracle. That men and gods share ancestry is not superstition but a metaphysics of participation: we are not aliens in the cosmos but its kin. That Manu is first sacrificer teaches that humanity’s dignity lies not in power but in offering, in aligning with ṛta, the cosmic order. That Yama is first of mortals to die declares that mortality itself is sacred, the doorway through which the law of existence becomes binding. These are not primitive fancies but luminous intuitions of truths still grasped haltingly by philosophers.

Conclusion

The Rigvedic poets bequeath us not a system but a tapestry: gods springing from waters, men fathered by sacrifice, kinship sealed through fire and vision. Unlike later traditions that solidify myth into doctrine, the Veda leaves the mystery open. It invites us to see ourselves as children of heaven and earth, of fire and dawn, of sacrifice and mortality. To defend the Rigvedic gods, then, is not to cling to relics of a bygone age, but to affirm a vision in which divinity and humanity interweave, and existence itself is worship. In that vision lies the true apologia for Vedic religion: not as mythology fossilized, but as philosophy sung.

References

[1] AV 10.7.25 — “The gods arose from the non-existent.”
[2] RV 10.129 — Gods born after the creation of the universe.
[3] RV 10.63.2 — “Born from Aditi, from the waters, from the earth.”
[4] RV 1.139.11 — Parallel to the triple origin of the gods.
[5] RV 1.113.19 — Uṣas as “mother of the gods.”
[6] RV 2.26.3 — Brahmaṇaspati as father of the gods.
[7] RV 9.87.2 — Soma as father of the gods.
[8] AV 1.30.2 — Some gods as “fathers,” others as “sons.”
[9] RV 10.63.7 — Manu Vaivasvata, the first sacrificer.
[10] RV 1.80.16 — “Father Manus.”
[11] RV 10.104 — The twins’ “highest kin”: a celestial Gandharva and a water-nymph.
[12] RV 1.96.2–4 — Agni “begot the offspring of men.”
[13] RV 1.139 — Descent of families (Atri, Kaṇva, etc.).
[14] RV 7.33.11 — Vasiṣṭha begotten by Mitra–Varuṇa and Urvaśī.