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Eschatology; the Doctrine of Atman
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question whether this universe was at all a creation or not, which could think of the origin of the world as being enveloped in the mystery of a primal non-differentiation of being and non-being; and which could think that it was the primal One which by its inherent fervour gave rise to the desire of a creation as the first manifestation of the germ of mind, from which the universe sprang forth through a series of mysterious gradual processes. In the Brāhmaṇas, however, we find that the cosmogonic view generally requires the agency of a creator, who is not however always the starting point, and we find that the theory of evolution is combined with the theory of creation, so that Prajapati is sometimes spoken of as the creator while at other times the creator is said to have floated in the primeval water as a cosmic golden egg.
Eschatology; the Doctrine of Atman.
There seems to be a belief in the Vedas that the soul could be separated from the body in states of swoon, and that it could exist after death, though we do not find there any trace of the doctrine of transmigration in a developed form. In the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa it is said that those who do not perform rites with correct knowledge are born again after death and suffer death again. In a hymn of the Rg-Veda (x. 58) the soul (manas) of a man apparently unconscious is invited to come back to him from the trees, herbs, the sky, the sun, etc. In many of the hymns there is also the belief in the existence of another world, where the highest material joys are attained as a result of the performance of the sacrifices and also in a hell of darkness underneath
where the evil-doers are punished. In the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa we find that the dead pass between two fires which burn the evildoers, but let the good go by1; it is also said there that everyone is born again after death, is weighed in a balance, and receives reward or punishment according as his works are good or bad. It is easy to see that scattered ideas like these with regard to the destiny of the soul of man according to the sacrifice that he performs or other good or bad deeds form the first rudiments of the later doctrine of metempsychosis. The idea that man enjoys or suffers, either in another world or by being born in this world according to his good or bad deeds, is the first beginning of the moral idea, though in the Brahmanic days the good deeds were 1 See Ś. B. 1. 9. 3, and also Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, pp. 166, 167.
