READING 0.2.2 HINDU ORIGIN STORY Macquarie University Big History School: Core

Lexile® measure: 800L MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY BIG HISTORY SCHOOL: CORE - READING 0.2.2. ORIGIN STORY: HINDU - 800L 2

Hinduism has existed and evolved as a religion for a very long time. It first appeared in agrarian civilizations in South Asia over 4600 years ago. The seeds of the Hindu religion survived even the decline and disappearance of the Indus River Valley civilization. This occurred between 2500 and 2800 years ago. It was during this period, that Hinduism emerged as a Vedic religion. HINDU ORIGIN STORY By David Baker

Hinduism has evolved and changed over the centuries as much as India has itself. There is no single founder or single place of origin. Hinduism lives and breathes the very soul of India. It is as diverse as the cultures within India. There is no canonical version of the origin story. What is laid down below are some elements that multiple versions, crafted over thousands of years, tend to hold. In the beginning, there was no beginning. Time has neither beginning nor end. It runs in cycles. The Universe has no beginning. It phases where it is born, lives, dies, and is born again. Like a flower, it blooms, its petals fall, and it returns to the soil only to sprout another flower. It forever exists and is forever changing form. Beyond our Universe there are many other universes and alternate realities that also live their own cycle of life and death. Each universe lasts for eons, before falling into chaos only to be reborn once again. Ancient Hinduism speaks of a supreme god, Brahma, who had four faces. Each face spoke one of the four Vedas. The Vedas are some of the oldest and most sacred religious texts of Hinduism: the Atharvaveda, the Samaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Rigveda. MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY BIG HISTORY SCHOOL: CORE - READING 0.2.2. ORIGIN STORY: HINDU - 800L 3

The Rigveda, a set of hymns composed around 1500 BCE, gives multiple theories for the birth of universes. The Nasadiya Sukta, one of these hymns, tells us before the Universe there was no existence but there was also not nothingness either. There was no air or space. No void. There was neither death nor immortality. There was neither night nor day. Darkness was wrapped in darkness. As if it were an unlit cosmic pond. Then there was only the Universe and nothing else. The Universe came, surrounded by nothing. Just the Universe existed, born of the power of heat. It was the primordial seed. The author of the Nazadiya Sukta then asks, “Who really knows where the Universe came from? Who will claim to know? For gods came after the creation of the Universe. Did a god’s will created the Universe, or were the gods mute? Perhaps the Universe formed itself, perhaps it did not. Only the highest god in heaven knows. Or perhaps even he does not.” The Sanskrit Puranas assert that each cycle of a universe lasts several Other schools of thought assert that a goddess represents the ultimate billion years. Each Universe has essential elements to them. These are reality in all things. They reject the dualism between the mundane and the earth, water, fire, sky, air, energy, and ahamkara. The ahamkara is the divine, and also male and female. These schools also consider all nature to human ego. This is what preoccupies the mind and obstructs us from be divine and the manifestation of Universe as a single entity. The goddess spiritual growth. The Puranas also assert there are multiple universes or is the cosmos, the cosmos is the goddess, along with everything in it. realities. In fact there are an infinite number, more than there are atoms Still more schools of thought claim that the ultimate reality of the in your body. Universe is impersonal. It doesn’t have any distinguishing characteristics. Within Hinduism, there are differing schools of thought. In all of them, All dualisms, differences, and divergences are an illusion. As such, any the Universe started from more or less what is described above in the god can represent the Universe or creation. This idea was put forth by Nazadiya Sukta. Then in some schools of thought, the Universe split into medieval theologians. They wished to unite all the main branches of yellow and red. The yellow represents changing reality, or the matter Hinduism. around us. The red represents the unchanging reality, or the forces Different branches of Hinduism have stories about the creation of of physics. These two colors produced an egg, which became the hot humanity. In one of the oldest versions, the supreme god, Brahma, Universe. According to some schools of thought, then came Vishnu. He created all species on Earth from his body. Then humans he created from was a supreme god, who took multiple forms or avatars throughout his his soul, to be the most dominant of animals on Earth. legends. At the command of Vishnu, there were created the three worlds of the Earth, air, and heavens. In other schools of thought, there came And so here we all are, existing for another few eons, until the Universe another supreme god, Shiva. This god was known as the ultimate creator ends and is born again. and destroyer. He united everything in the Universe and represented the duality between the individual spirit and the unchanging reality of the Universe. MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY BIG HISTORY SCHOOL: CORE - READING 0.2.2. ORIGIN STORY: HINDU - 800L 4

REFERENCES The Rig Veda. trans and ed. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. Dimmitt, Cornelia. Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012. Leeming, David and Margaret Leeming. Dictionary of Creation Myths. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, pg. 139-144. Sproul, Barbara. Primal Myths: Creation Myths around the World. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.

IMAGE CREDITS ‘India Varinasi Ganges Boats’ Credit: TonW https://pixabay.com/en/india-varinasi-ganges- boats-1309206/ CC0 ‘Brahma on Hamsa’ Credit: Nurpur, Punjab Hills, Northern India https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brahma_on_hamsa.jpg ‘Nelumbo nucifera’ Credit: Shin https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nelumbo_ nucifera1.jpg

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