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The Geography of the Puranas c13.s4: The Purāṇic Concepts

The Geography of the Purāṇas c13.s4

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English

The Purāṇic Concepts

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The Purāṇas are evidently based on the Vedas but they derive mostly from the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata—which represent the mytho-heroic stage of Hindū belief. Since the Purāṇas belong to a much later stage, they naturally present important modifications in the progress of opinion. They expand and systematise the theoretical cosmogony of the later epics. As the ultimate source is the same, it will be seen that their theories regarding cosmology, cosmogony and cosmography present striking similarities in fundamentals with those which prevailed in western Asia and the Mediterranean lands.

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The first part (or *Lakṣaṇa*) of all the Purāṇas deals mainly with the details of Creation—primary (*Sarga*) and secondary (*Prati-Sarga*). The first explains how the Universe proceeds from Prakṛti (or eternal crude matter); the second, in what manner the forms of things are developed from the elementary substances previously evolved, or how they reappear after their temporary destruction. Both these creations are periodical, but the termination of the first occurs only at the end of the life of Brahmā when not only all other forms are annihilated, but the elements are again merged into primary substance, besides which only the Spritual Being exists: the latter takes place at the end of every Kalpa or the Day of Brahmā, and affects only the forms of inferior creatures, and lower worlds, leaving the substance of the Universe entire and sages and gods unaffected. Thus the Purāṇic cosmogony is based on the two basic principles: viz., (a) infinite and eternal revolutions of the Universe and (b) the co-eternity of Spirit (Puruṣa) and matter (Pradhāna).

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Primary Creation

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In the beginning, the Purāṇas quoting from the Vedas, assert ‘there was then neither day nor night, nor sky nor earth, nor darkness nor light, nor any other thing, save only one, unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahmā and Puruṣa (Spirit) and Pradhāna (Matter). The two forms which are other than the essence of unmodified Viṣṇu are Pradhāna and Puruṣa; and his other form by which those two are connected or separated, is called Kāla (time). Where discrete substance is aggregated in crude matter, as in a foregone dissolution, that dissolution is termed elemental (Prakṛta)….’ (Viṣṇu P., Wilson, tr., Bk II, p. 12).

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Cosmic Nucleus

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We pass over the philosophical discussion regarding the equilibrium of qualities and their development at the time of creation; how the elements in successive order acquired the property of causality to one another and how each element was invested by its own rudiment (āvaraṇa) or each rudiment of its preceding gross and rudimental elements. We consider the stage when,

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Ether, air, light, water and earth severally united with properties of sound and the rest, existed as distinguishable according to their qualities, as soothing, terrific or stupefying; but possessing various energies, and being unconnected, they could not, without combination, create living things, not having blended with each other. Having combined, therefore, with one another, they assumed through their association, the character of one mass of entire unity; and from the direction of spirit, with the acquiescence of the indiscrete principle (Avyaktānu-grahenda) intellect and the rest, to the gross elements inclusive, formed an egg which gradually expanded like a bubble of water. This vast egg, O sage, compounded of the elements, and resting on the waters was the excellent natural abode of Viṣṇu in the form of Brahmā….

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In the egg, O Brahmā, were the continents and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the Universe, the gods, the demons and mankind. And this egg was externally invested by seven natural envelopes, i.e. water, air, fire, ether and Ahaṃkāra, the origin of elements, each tenfold the extent of that which is invested; next came the principle of intelligence; and finally, He who was surrounded by the indiscrete Principle; resembling thus the coconut, filled interiorly with pulp and exteriorly covered by husk and rind (Viṣṇu P., II, Wilson, tr., p. 18-19).

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A similar account of the first aggregation of the elements in the form of an egg is given in all the Purāṇas with the usual epithet Haima or Hiraṇya (golden). The symbolic representation of the nucleus from which the Universe was created and which undoubtedly has its origin in the Vedas was adopted by many nations. Traces of it occur amongst the Syrians, the Persians, the Egyptians and the Greeks. The idea of the Orphic Egg amongst the Greeks and that described by Aristophanes as well as the consecration of an egg as a part of the ceremony in the Dionysiaca and other mystics show how far the concept of a nucleus from which the Universe grew was embedded in the philosophy of ancient nations. If we interpret the epithet Haima or Hiraṇya (golden) as ‘bright and reddish yellow’ and the word ‘water’ as ‘water-vapour’, i.e., in its gaseous state we can see in the description of the Golden Egg the origin of the idea of a ‘hot, incandescent nebula’ which is the starting point of modern cosmological theories.

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The earliest cosmogony or theory of the Universe in which the laws of gravitation found a place was that of Kant, the Prussian philosopher (1755). He assumed that the collision of the hard particles of the primordial matter (conceived as supernaturally created) generated heat and rotation as they fell in upon one another under their mutual gravitational attraction. Thus, the original cold motionless cloud of matter became in due course a vast hot nebula, spinning so rapidly that rings of matter were successively thrown off its equator by centrifugal action, while the residual central mass remained as the Sun. Each ring was supposed to have condensed as a planet, which by a small-scale repetition of the same process threw off satellites; ultimately in this way the complete solar system came into being. Kant’s hypothesis is dynamically unsound but our interest in the theory lies in the fact that on the one hand it follows the pattern of Purāṇic cosmogony, i.e., the creation of the Egg or nucleus or Brahmā (or according to Kant, the existence of the original cold and motionless cloud and its transformation into a hot rotating nebula), during the process of universal creation, while on the other it is the forerunner of the very similar and justly famous nebular hypothesis of Laplace (1796) on which modern speculations on cosmogony are based.

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Similarly, the idea of cosmic cycles, i.e., the incidental dissolution of the world at the end of definite periods (Kalpas of the Purāṇas) and its recreation thereafter was firmly established among the Chaldeans, the Ionians, the Greeks and the Pythagoreans from which Plato adopted it. Although the principle was accepted in essence many and various opinions prevailed about the period covered by each cycle, and about the violence and character of the changes produced by the Sun. The Stoics adopted it in its most extreme form involving successive liquefactions of the Universe. The Chaldeans thought that whenever all the planets come into conjunction on one straight line in the sign of the zodiac Cancer, the entire universe is destroyed by fire, but destroyed to be born again: similarly the world is destroyed by water when the same phenomenon occurs in Capricorn. The theory of a complete and universal birth and rebirth (paliogenesis) was held by some of the Greek philosophers. Plato and Aristotle, however, seem to have restricted the destructive effects of the celestial influence to the sub-lunar sphere and maintained that the realm above the Moon (i.e., Mahāloka of the Purāṇas or the worlds of gods who live in the upper two spheres) were eternal. On the whole, the belief in periodically recurrent destructions of the earth by water (one of which is mentioned in the old Testament and in the Al-Koran) was more widespread and was given greater definition than belief in corresponding destruction by fire. The main reason for this may be attributed to rudimentary geological observations (notably of the presence of shells on high ground) which showed that portions of the earth's surface had at one time lain beneath the waters.

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