Upanishads · Atharvaśiras 43
॥
Devanāgarī
अक्षरात् संजायते कालः कालाद् व्यापक उच्यते
Transliteration (IAST)
akṣarāt saṃjāyate kālaḥ kālād vyāpaka ucyate
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
अक्षरात् संजायते कालःakṣarāt saṃjāyate kālaḥout of the imperishable time is born; from the undecaying arises kāla
कालात् व्यापकः उच्यतेkālāt vyāpakaḥ ucyatefrom time the Pervader is named; from time the omnipresent gets his name
Translation
Out of the imperishable time is born, and from time the All-pervading is named.
Version
b1ab27d327e4 · published Jul 29, 2026, 3:17:52 AM UTC
Available inRUENPage between verses with
Two lines, and in them a whole doctrine of time is compressed.
It says: akṣarāt saṃjāyate kālaḥ — “out of the imperishable time is born”.
Time, then, is not primary. It was born; it has a source, and that source is akṣara, “the imperishable”.
And this answers what the previous section said: “nothing before him, nothing after”. Of course not — since the very “before” and “after” came out of Him.
Then the second line: “from time the Pervader is named”, vyāpaka.
The word already stood in the chain of the thirty-fourth section, as its third link: “who is the Praṇava is the All-pervading”. There it was explained by the simile of oil in the sesame cake.
Here it is said that this name arises from time.
The sense, it seems, is this: pervasion is recognised in time. While nothing moves, one cannot see that something passes through everything; movement is time, and in it the Pervader is discovered.
The next section will unfold this into a whole cosmogony.