Studies in the Epics and Puranas c8.53

c8.53

The philosophy of Not-Being has been connected by the *Chāndogya* with the myth of the Universal Egg²⁵ to which some reference has already been made. The *Upaniṣad* passage mentions two parts of the Egg, viz. of gold and silver, out of which came mountains, clouds, rivers, oceans, and the sun. Similar to the idea of regarding the universe as a huge egg was the view that the universe was a "huge chest with the earth as its bottom and the heaven as its upper lid, the sky as its inside and the quarters as its corners, containing in its inside a rich treasure."26