That intellect and sacrifice engendered,
The one god over all the gods exalted:
What god shall we with sacrifices worship?
The refrain receives its answer in a tenth stanza (added to the poem at a later time), which proclaims the unknown god to be Prajāpati.
Two other cosmogonic poems explain the origin of the world philosophically as the evolution of the existent (sat) from the non-existent (asat). In the somewhat confused account given in one of them (x. 72), three stages of creation may be distinguished: first the world is produced, then the gods, and lastly the sun. The theory of evolution is here still combined with that of creation:—
Even as a smith, the Lord of Prayer,
Together forged this universe:
In earliest ages of the gods
From what was not arose what is.