The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s6.19

v2.c40.s6.19

The nature of the process by which the universe comes into being is considered under many different aspects, but they all rest on the old hypothesis of the mode of creation of the universe. They adopt just the same sort of language: there was according to one version first not-being, which was being: it arose: an egg was evolved: it lay for a year: it split open into two halves, one of silver which is the earth, and one of gold which is the heaven. The material of the world as it exists is in the most primitive view the waters, an idea already found in the Rigveda² and this conception is adhered to in the Aitareya Upaniṣad. A more developed, and probably later, view is that of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad,³ which makes the Brahman resolve to create the world, and therefore to create⁴ heat, whence arose, as sweat arises in man, the waters, and from the waters came food, after which the supreme self enters into the three as the individual self, the Jīvātman. Thereafter a further step is taken: the Jīvātman having entered, the three elements are mixed together so that existing things are composed of the three separate elements, an idea which is the source of the distinction of the subtle and the gross elements, which occurs as such first in the Praçna Upaniṣad,⁵ where the earth, water, heat, wind, and ether elements are distinguished from the earth, water, heat, wind, and ether. A further and very important development of this theory is that of the Taittirīya Upaniṣad⁶ which derives from the Ātman the ether, wind, fire, water, and earth. This five-fold division may be regarded as the established order in the philosophy of India, and the fact that the Aitareya⁷ has not it in definite form shows that it is earlier than the Taittirīya. With the five elements correspond the five senses.