Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s31: Indian Cosmogony
Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s31
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Indian Cosmogony
c4.s31.1
Every religion in India, whether it be Hindu (Brahmanical), Buddhist or Jain had its theory of cosmogony. Unlike the Christian, they regarded the world as of inconceivable antiquity (anadi). However, its history could be divided into four ages : Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali, during which the world gradually deteriorated from all truth and happiness—the Golden Age²⁷—to untruth and misery. We are now in the last.
c4.s31.2
²⁷ This conception may be compared with those of the Greeks preserved by HESIOD. He had envisaged five stages: (1) The Age of Gold and Immortals; (2) The Age of Silver, when man was less noble by far; (3) The Age of Bronze, when not only everything was of bronze, but when man was delighted in war; (4) The Age of Epic Heroes and (5) The Age of Iron and Dread Sorrow. Later the Roman author Lucretius had also put forward a semi-philosophical, semi-materialistic scheme, according to which man first used his nails, teeth, bones, wood and fire, then copper and still later iron. DANIEL, A Hundred Years of Archaeology, pp. 16-7.
c4.s31.3
Then later, about the 4th century A.D. developed the theory of the avataras (incarnations) of the god, beginning with that of the Fish and ending with the emergence of "Full Man". This theory reminds us of the biological evolution of man.