सर्वे वै देवा देवीमुपतस्थुः । कासि त्वं महादेवि । साब्रवीदहं ब्रह्मस्वरूपिणी । मत्तः प्रकृतिपुरुषात्मकं जगच्छून्यं चाशून्यं च । अहमानन्दानानन्दाः विज्ञानाविज्ञाने अहम् । ब्रह्मा ब्रह्मणि वेदितव्ये । इत्याहाथर्वणि श्रुतिः
sarve vai devā devīmupatasthuḥ | kāsi tvaṃ mahādevi | sābravīdahaṃ brahmasvarūpiṇī | mattaḥ prakṛtipuruṣātmakaṃ jagacchūnyaṃ cāśūnyaṃ ca | ahamānandānānandāḥ vijñānāvijñāne aham | brahmā brahmaṇi veditavye | ityāhātharvaṇi śrutiḥ
«Hari, om. All the gods approached the Goddess: "who are you, great Goddess?" She said: I am she whose form is Brahman. From me [comes] the world, made of nature and spirit, and the empty and the not-empty. I am bliss and non-bliss; knowledge and ignorance are I. Brahman and non-Brahman must be known. So says the Atharvan śruti».
0f1c2a4dcb5f · प्रकाशित 12 अग॰ 2026, 5:00:00 am UTC
उपलब्ध भाषाएँRUENश्लोक बदलें इन कुंजियों से
The book opens with a question almost never asked in the upaniṣads: not “what is Brahman,” not “who is the Ātman,” but — kā asi tvam, “who are you?”
The question concerns a person. The gods approach the Goddess and ask her directly, rather than debating about her among themselves; and she answers in the first person. This whole small book is her answer, and hence it rests on “I” from beginning to end.
The answer opens with a word worth examining: brahma-svarūpiṇī, “she whose form is Brahman.” Not “I am Brahman,” but “I am she whose form is Brahman”; and the suffix here is feminine, denoting the possessor of a property.
The difference is small to the ear and large in meaning. “I am Brahman” is a statement of identity; “I, having the form of Brahman” is a statement about a property of the one who speaks. The second presupposes a speaker who has this property — whereas identity has no possessor.
Note, too, that the world is called prakṛti-puruṣa-ātmaka, “made of nature and spirit,” that is, twofold. The analysis of this duality is the subject of Sāṅkhya and of the whole thirteenth chapter of the Gītā; and already in the first line of this book the Highest is described not as one without a second, but as the source of two.