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by Jayaram V
This article is about the origin and
development of the concept of God in Hinduism in the context of
the Vedas in general and the Isa Upanishad in particular and
whether the elements of monotheism entered Hinduism indigenously
through prevailing traditions or through some external source
such as Judaism or Christianity. The author believes that the
Vedic people were aware of a single supreme universal God from
the earlier days, but
they did not mention Him publicly nor made Him any offerings
directly for valid reasons such as His impersonal,
transcendental
and absolute nature.
There is one translation of the Isa Upanishad in circulation
the
author of which, one Mr.Ninan, put forward a speculative
theory that the Isa Upanishad was composed after its authors got
the idea of a supreme and universal God from elsewhere in the post Christian era. He goes on to argue
that the ancient Indians had no concept of God or Parameswara
prior to the Christian era and that they worshipped only
different devas or gods. In his opinion the Indians got the idea
of Parameswara or a supreme God from El Elyon, meaning the most
high, used by certain middle eastern ancient traditions to denote
God. In his translation he refers to Isa as Jesus and tries to
wiggle around some important concepts of Hinduism mentioned in
the Upanishad by carefully avoiding refrence to their original meaning and
giving them a new and rather distorted
interpretation.
Mr. Ninan has done a good job by translating the Upanishad
with a pro-Christian slant and acknowledging a scripture outside
the pale of Christianity as sacred and venerable, whatever may
be his motivation. From a Hindu perspective, there is nothing
wrong with calling Jesus as Isa. One can call God by any name.
Name is just a form, where as God is beyond all names and words. But the attitude with which the author has attempted to justify
his theory shows his lack of familiarity with Hindu scriptures
and his inability to comprehend the philosophy contained in
them. Before attempting to translate the scripture, he should
have followed the advice of Mr.R.Gordon1
who urged the
Christians about 200 years ago in the following words to make
use of the Hindu scriptures, as a part of their old Testament,
for their value in expressing some important aspects of
Christianity. He wrote:
"Christianity in India needs the Vedanta. We missionaries
have not realized this with half the clearness that we should.
We cannot move freely and joyfully in our own religion; because
we have not sufficient terms and modes of expression wherewith
to express the more immanental aspects of Christianity. A very
useful step would be the recognition of certain books and
passages in the literature of the Vedanta as constituting what
might be called an Ethnic Old Testament. The permission of
ecclesiastical authorities would then be asked for reading
passages found in such a canon of Ethnic Old Testament as divine
service along with passages from New Testament as alternatives
to the Old Testament lessons"
Yes, if the church can accept the old testament of Judaism
wholeheartedly without reservations, why not the Upanishads of
Hinduism, a religion that has done no harm or disservice to
Christ or his teachings and the scriptures that bear allegiance
to no particular religion or prophet? It is important to note
here that Hinduism is not a religion, but a repository of sacred
knowledge that can be used to reach God through any religion or
dogma or as a glue to cement one's faith. It can fill in the gaps
of any religious creed and remove its weaknesses. If one can
ignore the outer and ritual aspects of Hinduism as well as the
individual divinities and their outer forms, one can easily
incorporate into any religion the deeper philosophical and
symbolic aspects of Hinduism, such as the truths reflected in
the Upanishads, and its methods and techniques to transcend
ourselves.
We have already seen how yoga can improve the lives of
people, independent of their religious and spiritual beliefs.
Hindu philosophy can do the same or perhaps even better. One
does not have to believe in Hindu divinities to follow its
theosophical truths or practice its methods. Hinduism offers a
wide variety of choices to people to practice their individual
faith. This is the beauty and the charm of Hinduism. Followers
of other faiths should not have any quarrel with Hinduism
because Hinduism believes in the divinity of all beings and the
possibility of man ascending to the heights of God through
various means according to his or her faith. In this endeavor
religion is just a package, actually an illusion or delusion,
because what is true and permanent is neither religion nor our
single-minded attachment to it but the transcendental Self that
is in all.
Mr.Ninan's contention that Indians got the idea of
Parameswara from the Semitic expression of El Elyon and then
used that concept in the composition of the Isa Upanishad is not
tenable on many grounds. In a manner, it is a sacrilege because
the Vedas, including the Upanishads, are divine revelations,
not composed by man or human intellect. They contain profound symbolism which is
not comprehensible even to the most knowledgeable among the
students and scholars of Hinduism, speaking about which Sri
Aurobindo2 said, "Dayananda has given the clue to the linguistic
secret of the Rishis and reemphasized one central idea of the
Vedic religion, the idea of the One Being with the Devas
expressing in numerous names and forms the many-sidedness of His
unity."
Hinduism is a tradition that evolved out of many streams of
thoughts, all of which originated and developed in the Indian
subcontinent. Around the time the composition of the Vedas was
completed, India was the spiritual center of the world, where
freedom of thought flourished by the side of Brahmanical
puritanism and caste rigidities. Around 600 BCE, Indian society
was a medley of conflicting thoughts and ideas of glorious
visionary idealism, passive anarchism, agnostic skepticism and
down to earth philosophies of materialism such as that of the
Carvakas or the Lokayatas. If there was an attempt on the part
of some to fathom the
depth of their inner selves through ascetic means and rigorous
austerities, there was also the case of some, who gave
themselves up, with
nihilistic resignation, to the vagaries of fatalism that
advocated an effortless and passive submission to the elements
of life and predetermined progression of events. Elsewhere, in
pastoral communities, if ordinary minds remained content with the
mechanical ritualism of their ancestors as a way of life,
extraordinary minds such as Yajnavalkya, Janaka, Buddha and
Mahavira trod new paths, breaking away from tradition, in search
of solutions to salvation and the problem of suffering. It
was a freedom of thought that sprung neither from the assurances
of constitutional guarantees nor from the enlightened
self-interest of truth seekers, but from an enquiry that rested
upon the idealism and curiosity of selfless souls who had
passion for truth and attempted to enquire into the enigma of
life, beyond the limits of human intelligence and sensory
knowledge and translate their experiences into meaningful human
language.
Following are some of the points put forward by this
author in support of the argument that the concept of an
absolute and eternal Being as the source of all is an indigenous
development in which neither Christianity nor Judaism played any
role either directly or indirectly at any point of time in the
history of Hinduism. The ancient Indians were aware of the
existence of an eternal and supreme God whom they revered
secretly for a very long time, before they began mentioning Him
publicly in sacrificial chants and daily utterances. In proving
this contention, we are not even going into the details
of Indus valley civilization and its supposed connection with
the Saraswathi civilization, believed to have flourished around
5000 BC. We are content to confine our discussion with the
classical descriptions of the Vedic religion as mentioned in
many standard books of Indian history with its starting point as
2500 BC or so.
1. The concept of a single universal God as the ruler of the
world or the worlds was known to the people of Egypt, Persia and
India long before Christ was born and also before Abraham of the
old Testament. We find traces of monotheism in some of the
earliest Rigvedic hymns. Dyaus the shining god of heaven
and Prithvi the earth goddess are "among the oldest of the vedic
deities."3 Varuna, who is also mentioned in Zoroastrianism and
bears the epithet asura (ahura), was the "sovereign of the
universe and guardian of the moral law," or rta. Some
of
the earliest Rigvedic hymns, such as the following, clearly reflect the elements of
monotheism developing in early Vedic religion.4.
"They call him Indra, Mitra,
Varuna and Agni;
He is the heavenly bird Garutmat.
To what is
One, the poets give many a name.
They call it Agni, Yama,
Matariswan."
In the hymn addressed to Hiranyagarbha (the cosmic golden
germ), we find
the following expression:
"Who is our Father, our Creator,
Maker,
Who every place doth know and every creature;
By whom
alone the gods were given their names,
To Him all creatures go,
to ask Him."
2. In the ancient world, Jesus was not the only person who
was recognized as the son of God. It was a common tradition in
India, Egypt and Persia to regard a king as God himself in human
form or a direct descendent of God and submission to him and his
rule as a mark of surrender to God. The son of a divine ruler was
regarded as the son
of God and treated with utmost fear and respect by virtue of
his birth. This ensured smooth succession and continuity of the
political institutions upon earth. This practice should not be
confused with the Vedic beliefs. These were political
ramification of religious beliefs, the clever manipulation of
human sentiment to bind people to their states and monarchs in
the absence of regular means of communication such as radio. TV
or newspapers of today.
3. Closely related with the concept of God in Vedic religion
was the concept of rta or natural order of things and events.
Ancient Indians believed that the regularity of events experienced in life,
in the form of recurring days and nights, months and seasons,
aging and death, movement of stars and planets, suggested the
existence of an invisible and intelligent controller or regulator
who, with his unassailable power, ensured their continuity and predictability (niyati)
of the world. They
referred that power as the will of God and believed that things moved out of
fear and respect for Him.
3. As far back as 1500 BCE, the ancient Indians had the concept of a single universal God
whom they referred as Brahman, Iswara,
Hiranyagarbha, Hiranmayi-prajapati or simply as "That". In the
words of George Feuerstein5
"The nuclei of the oldest
Upanishads - Brahad-Aranyaka, Chandogya, Kaushitaki, Aitareya and
Kena Upanishad - appear to date back over three thousand years
ago." The emergence of Brahman as the single supreme God and
Lord of manifest creation happened with the internalization of Vedic
rituals and externalization of human form into cosmic form, as is evident in
some passages of the Upanishads like the Katha and the Kaushataki Upanishad. Mr. Feuerstein further adds, "The idea
that behind the reality of multiple forms - our ever changing
universe - there abides an eternally unchanging single Being was
communicated already in the Rigvedic times. What was new was
that the grand discovery transcended the legacy of sacrificial
ritualism."
Brahman was a mystery even to the gods. Then what of men! The Kena
Upanishad explains how the gods themselves were unaware of the
supreme Brahman till they came to know about Him from Uma
Haimavati, after a brief encounter with Him, in which they were
utterly and totally outsmarted by a mysterious Being. A miniscule knowledge of Him
made Indra leader of the heavens and Vayu and Agni as prominent
deities. This Upanishad supports the speculation that elements
of monotheism entered Hinduism through ascetic traditions such
as Savisim.
4. Of the two hundred plus Upanishads known, about 12 or 14
are considered the oldest and the most important. Of them Isa
Upanishad is one. If we have to go by the interpretation of Mr.Ninan that Isa Upanishad was composed after the Christian
era, then all the oldest Upanishads, which speak about Brahman or an
Universal Being, and and most of the Samhitas and Brahmanas
associated with them, should have also been composed in the same
time frame, which is nearly 600 years after the Buddha and Mahavira and
300 years after Kautilya, the author of Arthashastra and
the coronoation of Chandragupta Maurya, a contemporary of Alexander. This is an absurd claim
because it is not tenable on any grounds. The principal Upanishads
were composed long before the Christian era, at least by 700-800
BCE. The age ascribed to them by most historians, usually falls between 1500 BCE
and 800 BCE. Some Indian scholars stretch the date back to 2000
BC or earlier.
5. Brahman is frequently referred in Upanishads in neutral
gender as "That", a concept that is alien to the Semitic
religions, which address God always as masculine. The oldest of the Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad,
contains the famous saying (mahavakya), "Aham Brahmasmi,"
meaning I am Brahman. Another important statement in reference to Brahman is
"tattvamasi," meaning you are That. One of the verses in the Isa
Upanishad contains the poignant expression, "so'ham asmi, "
meaning whatever is That, That also I am .
These are pure Indian expressions, found nowhere else. In the
old testament when Moses encounters God and asks Him who He is,
He replies, "I am I am." In both the testaments, we do not find
any humans expressing unity with God in such exalted words,
where as in the Upanishads we find them frequently and use them
as great truths (mahavakyas) for meditation.
6. The idea of a supreme universal Being as the Creator and
Witness, as immanent and transcendent, hidden in every aspect of creation as the subject
as well as
object, in them and enveloping them, developed in the Indian
subcontinent indigenously. Through the spiritual and ascetic
paths of knowledge, the vision of such grandeur dawned upon the consciousness of seers and sages,
as they contemplated upon
the mysteries of human existence, looking inwardly for the truth that was
hidden within themselves. In deeper states of meditation, they
saw an image of themselves projected outwardly and universally upon
the visible and invisible reality of the gross and
subtle worlds. They saw the
universal and infinite form of God as an extension of their own form (tattvamasi), the space outside as a continuation of the
space within themselves (aham Brahmasmi) and the divinities whom
they worshipped in the rituals actually as residing in their own bodies in
subtle form, nourishing themselves through the good deeds and
sacrificial acts of humans.
They acknowledged His sacred and silent presence, calling
Him by different names and honoring His sanctity. But they were
in no hurry to reveal the profound secret to everyone
indiscriminately as their emphasis was not on preaching empty
dogma but on duplicating the experience in themselves and others
through sustained spiritual practice and arriving at Truth
through personal experience. So they kept the
secret to themselves, revealing it only to a few deserving
aspirants. Since the Upanishads were taught in private, in whispering tones,
as the master and the disciples sat together in a secluded
palce, they were called the Upanishads, meaning sitting nearby.
Speaking of the singular manner in which the concept of Supreme
Being developed in India, Deussen 6 writes,
"Monotheism was attained in Egypt by a mechanical identification
of the various local gods, in Palestine by proscription of other
gods and violent persecution of their worshippers for the
benefit of their nation god Jehovah. In India they reached
monism, though not monotheism, on a more philosophical path
seeing through the veil of the manifold the unity which
underlies it."
7. The concept of God found in the Upanishads is much grander,
more complex and essentially different than the descriptions of God
found in other religions. The Vedic religion was neither
polytheistic nor monotheistic but had elements of both. It is
referred to as henotheism or kathenotheism, characterized by
belief in multiple gods and each god standing out as the
highest. The Brahman of Upanishads is an impersonal God, who
does not take sides, nor responds to the calls of individuals
because there is nothing outside of Him and there is nothing
other than Him.
He is complete, fulfilled, self-absorbed and immersed in Himself. He
does not communicate with anyone, because for communication you
need an object and there is no object that exists outside of
Him. But He can be
reached and experienced personally as oneself. That job is left to His other manifestations, the
lesser divinities and personal Gods such as Vishnu and Siva who
are worshipped in their highest aspect as Brahman Himself. In Hinduism, the rule of God extends
far beyond the earth and heaven to innumerable worlds of light
and darkness and in multiple planes of granularity, from
the subtlest to the grossest. The descriptions of Brahman or
Universal Self in Hinduism is no different from those of the
universe found in the text books of quantum physics and modern
astronomy, except that one is spiritual and the other purely
material. Speaking of the Vedic vision of God, Max Mueller7
wrote,
"In fact, the Vedic poets had arrived at a conception of the
godhead which was reached once more by some of the Christian
philosophers at Alexandria, but which even at present is beyond
the reach of many who call themselves Christians."
8. Isa Upanishad is one of the oldest of the Upanishads
composed prior to the Christian era. The Upanishad speaks of a
universal Lord "Isa" and reflects the growing influence
of Vaishnavisim, Saivism and the Bhakti (devotional) movement.
Ancient Indians were familiar with the word "isa" long before
the Christian era. The Upanishad does not recognize son of God but God
Himself as the omniscient and omnipresent ruler and dweller of
not just one world but of many moving worlds within the moving
universe (jagatyam jagat). Some of the concepts mentioned in it
are antithetical to the main teachings of Christianity, such as the concept of karma, surrender to God, performance of
obligatory duties, impermanence of the life and things, detachment,
departure of soul, right knowledge and right actions, sunlit worlds (not just one
heaven) and sunless worlds (not just one hell) and cremation.
Most importantly, some of its verse are chanted during cremation
ceremonies as the body is consigned to flames. It advocates
neither the blind worship of God nor relentless preoccupation
with the material rewards, but a balanced approach in
life towards God and personal duty, towards the existential reality
and the
transcendental reality and towards knowledge of God and the
knowledge of life. It cautions people not to choose knowledge
(spiritual practice) at the expense of ignorance (mundane life)
or vice versa to avoid entering the
sunless worlds of utter darkness.
9. One of the verses (15) in the Upanishad is a prayer for the departed
soul's journey to the world of sun (surya or savitr), where he is
beseeched to
grant the soul a passage to the sunlit world, addressing him with different names, such as
Pusan, meaning nourisher, and prajapatya, meaning son of Prajapathi
Brahma (Prajapati is the father of Adityas, the solar deities of
which the sun is one). Aditi, the universal Mother and the
mother of the devas, is also their mother. According to Vedic beliefs, a departed soul
travels either to the world of Sun or the world of moon depending
upon in which part of the year the death occurred. Those who
died during the first half of the year (summer solastice) went along the northern
route to the sun and those who died in the second half of the
year (winter solastice) went along the southern route to the moon. They were either
consumed there by gods or returned to the earth, after exhausting their
karmas, to be reborn again. The Isa Upanishad reflects the
ancient beliefs of Vedic religion, before the concept karma and
rebirth took firm roots and the concept of souls
travelling to the ancestral world gave way to the more complex
forms of after life, cosmology and reward and retribution for
the souls for their actions upon earth. In no way this Upanishad
refers either to Jesus or the Biblical God of genesis.
10. The word Isa is a Sanskrit word, neither Semitic nor Aramic
nor Hittite nor Phoenician nor Persian. It is frequently used in
various religious expressions and rooted in Hindu tradition to
denote the power and status of divinities as well as men of
position. Isa means master or lord. It is used
in such expressions as vagisa, suresa and mahesa to denote
royalty or lordship. Isa is an epithet
of Lord Siva. Etymologically, the "ī" in the "isa" (pronounced as eesa) means desire or
the cupid god Manmadha. "Sa" means the destroyer or the weapon
that destroys. In this sense Isa means Lord Siva, who
destroyed the cupid Manmadha when he tried to tempt the
meditating Siva to fall
in love with Parvathi. There are many derivative and associative
words of Isa used frequently in Hindu literature, mostly in a
religious sense. Isana, a derivative word, is an
epithet of Lord Siva, Surya (the sun god) and also Lord Vishnu. Isanya is the north eastern direction,
which is ruled by Isana or God
Himself. It has special significance in Vastu sastra and the
construction of buildings and temples. Isita, meaning superiority or greatness, is one of the
eight siddhis or perfections of Lord Siva. Isvara, another
derivative word, means
powerful, capable, lord, ruler, husband, king and Siva. In classical
yoga, Isvara means individual soul and personal god. Goddess Durga is known as Isvari. Isa-sakha is an epithet of Kubera. The
sacred city of Varanasi is known as Isanagari or the city of
Lord Siva.
11. For the Hindus the Vedas are sacred and inviolable. They
constitute the sruti literature because they are only heard and not manmade (apaurusheya),
in contrast to the smriti literature, which is believed to be a
product of human intellect.
Isa Upanishad is an inseparable part of the Yajurveda. According to Hindu
beliefs the Vedas are inviolable because they constitute the standard
truth or the final authority
(sabda pramana) in ascertaining correct knowledge. Each word in
the Veda is indisputable because it emanated from God Himself directly.
One can only chant it or use it but cannot argue about its
divinity or authority. To make an assumption that the Isa Upanishad was composed
with the help of borrowed concepts from an unknown religion,
amounts to doubting the sanctity of the Vedas
and their divine origin.
12. For more than 4000 years, the priestly families of the
Hindu socieity maintained the purity of the Vedas
with utmost devotion and dedication. It was not done under the
fear of temporal authority or the lure of money. It was done as
a sacred responsibility, an obligatory duty, for the preservation
of dharma and as a service to God, not by a few, but thousands of
families, for generations. As trustees of sacred knowledge, they assumed moral,
personal, family and religious responsibility to preserve them
for the posterity, often under testing circumstances and fear of
death in the hands of intolerant rulers. They did not allow any
tampering of the scripture for fear of
polluting the rituals and attracting the displeasure of the
divinities. The Bible is a holy book. It is about
God but not from God. In
contrast, the Vedas are divine revelations about God and His creation.
They are manifested at the beginning of each time cycle (mahayuga)
and withdrawn at the end of it. They are meant for the welfare of men and to keep the worlds of
beings and gods in their respective spheres and let the dharma
(divine law) and rta or regularity follow its own course.
13. That the purity of the Vedas and other religious scriptures
were maintained in India since the earliest times has been
confirmed by the European scholars who studied them in the
past. According to A.L.Basham 8,
the European historians who
collected the Vedas from different places in India during 1780
were amazed to see that "the text as transmitted in Kashmir was
scarcely different from that transmitted in Tamilnadu." This was
over 4000 years after the early Vedic hymns of the Rig-Veda were
composed.
14. Anyone who is familiar with Indian religions knows that
Hinduism is the oldest living religion10
of the world. All the
religions and religious traditions that thrived in ancient
India, including some atheistic and agnostic schools, originated
from India indigenously and shared some basic concepts. Even the atheistic
schools like the Carvakas had something in common with the
theistic schools in matters such as the standards of objectivity (pramanas),
nature of substances (padarthas) and nomenclature of elements (bhutadi). There was no widespread
influence or knowledge of the Judeo-Christian religions in the
Indian subcontinent till the end of the Mughal period. They had
some knowledge of the Indo-Iranian religions such as
Zoroastrianism, but the relationship between the two was hardly
cordial. Even if we assume that some Christian missionaries travelled to India in the early
Christian era, their contribution and influence on Indian
society and their religious beliefs remained
isolated and local.
15. Finally, one can imagine the difficulties and obstacles
involved in the ancient world in accepting ideas that were alien
to a native people. through alterations to a religious scripture
that was believed to be inviolable, in a religion that had
no centralized authority. It is difficult to foresee it
happening on a uniform scale, across the length
and breadth of the country, spanning thousands of miles,
involving countless individual priestly families of different
hues and languages, at a time when communication was not easy to
establish, and in a manner that would have allowed the
alterations go unnoticed, legitimate and permanent. For over 3000
years, India has an going tradition of scholars writing
commentaries on the prevailing texts and debating the finer
nuances of religious dogmas to settle differences or clarify
doubts. The religious groups of
ancient India competed for attention and membership through
devotional and personal means rather than wars and aggression.
If they were familiar with the concepts of Christianity they
would have said so somewhere in their commentaries.
Conclusion
Although the early Vedic people
worshipped various divinities, they knew that hidden behind all
the divinities and encompassing all the reality was a single
universal Principle that controlled the order and rhythm of the
worlds and ensured their continuity. They
called it variously as That (tat), the One (akam), the ancient (adi),
the eternal (nityam) and Brahman. They did not mention Him
directly in the early hymns nor offered Him oblations directly
for valid reasons. Firstly Brahman was a secret. Even the gods
could not fathom Him nor Knew Him. So He was unmentionable in
the public. Secondly, He was an impersonal and absolute God who
favored none, desired nothing and was forever stable and
detached. So the Vedic priests who aimed to seek personal favors
from the divinities through rituals, saw no point in seeking His
help. Thirdly, He was incommunicable through the senses and the
mind. The duality of the knower and the known, the subject and
the object, or the process of knowing did not exist in Him. A
gulf separated one aspect of Him for the other, while He
remained immersed in Himself, watching the movements (jagat) He
created within Himself (jagatyam) with dispassion. He was the
two birds in One; one watched, while the other enjoyed. The gulf
between the two sides of His reality could not be bridged
except through transcendental means. The Vedic priests
therefore choose not to offer Him any prayers directly, while
they knew that all the prayers reached Him ultimately through
the divinities in whom He existed. They confined their
prayers to the lesser divinities and left the task of seeking
Brahman to those who were willing to make the necessary
sacrifices and reach out to Him spiritually through austerities and
penances.
It was only when the impersonal Brahman became personal in
the form of personal God, as the Vedic religion was now reaching
out to a wider audience in the Gangetic plains of northern
India, we see a definite shift in emphasis
from the early Vedic deities such as Indra, Agni and Varuna to
newer gods with greater charm and personal appeal such as Siva
and Vishnu. It coincided with the development of devotional
theism (bhakti movement) and the emergence of strong theistic
movements such as Saivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism. In the
Bhagavadgita we see this shift clearly and hear about it directly from
Lord Krishna who declares that although He is the unmanifest, supreme and highest
universal God who exists everywhere and in everything, it is not
difficult to communicate with Him and that He would respond to the calls of
His devotees promptly through His manifest form. He also
explains the
difficulties in worshipping invisible and formless Brahman in the following manner 9.
Difficult and full of suffering indeed is the path
Of those whose minds are fixed on the Unmanifest
For indeed most painful is the path of those
Whose goal is to reach the Unmanifest.
But those who are fully devoted to Me
Who surrender all actions to me,
Worship Me and meditate on Me
With unflinching devotion
I speedily rescue them from
the samsara that is bound by death
The Vedic scholars not only envisaged the universal supreme
God but speculated upon the origin of life and the
manifestation of the worlds. The creation hymn of the Rigveda is
a supreme example of the extent of maturity of thought prevailed
in those times. Even by the liberal and biased estimates of European
historians, such as Basham, the creation hymn was
composed "no later than 900 BCE." It shows an "incredible
sophistication" of the "development of thought," presenting an
"imaginative picture of a universe evolving out of a primal
condition that was neither being nor nonbeing, neither the
cosmos nor the chaos." The long hymn which contains many
fundamental concepts
of Hinduism, concludes in the following manner.
But, after all, who knows, and who can say
whence all it came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are latter than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
Whence all the creation had its origin
He, whether He fashioned it or whether He did not,
He who surveys it all from highest heaven
He knows - or may be He does not know.
Contrast this with the creation theory proposed in the
Genesis and you will see the extent of difference between the
two religions in their disposition and approach to the concept
of God.
Suggested Further Reading
Footnotes
1. Mr.R.Gordon Milburn, the Indian Interpreter 1913. As
quoted in the Principal Upanishads by S. Radhakrishnan.
2.The Secret Of the Veda, Chapter III, Modern Theories by
Sri Aurobindo.
3. An Advanced History of India, R.C.Majumdar,
H.C.Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Datta, Chapter III, The Early
Vedic Age.
4. Ekam vipra bahudha vadanti, agnim, yamam, matariswanam ahuh -
Rigveda 1.164.46.
5. The Yoga Tradition, Its History, Literature Philosophy and
Practice by George Feuerstein, PH.D.
6. Outlines of Indian Philosophy, Deussen.
7. The Six Systems Of Indian Philsophy by Max Mueller.
8. The Origins and Development Of Classical Hinduism, by A. L. Basham.
9. The Bhagavadgita, Chapter 12 verses 5 to 7.
10. The word religion is used here and elsewhere for lack of
proper expression. Hinduism is not a religion in the western
sense of the word. This fact is well known to all who are
familiar with it.
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