Studies in the Epics and Puranas c8.55

c8.55

The conception of Being as the arche of things follows that of Not-Being; and the *Chāndogya* directly tells us that Being alone existed at the beginning of things.²⁷ It criticizes those who regard the primeval existent as Not-Being, and Being as produced therefrom. It further tells us that there are three different colours belonging to the three different elements, *viz.* the red, the white and the black, which were later borrowed by the Sāṅkhya philosophy and made to constitute the three different qualities of the Sāṅkhya Prakṛti. In short, the *Chāndogya* maintains a sort of a philosophical trinitarian monism.