Jain Journal 1968 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 43

JULY, 1968
deals with that branch of learning which treats of the universe as an ordered system.
5. Cosmogony, ancient and modern
Hypothesis about cosmogony were originally entirely fanciful and represented only the processes which their originators thought had taken place. They were often expressed in myths. The account of creation in the Book of Genesis is an excellent allegorical outline. The Hebrews derived it from the earlier and cruder ideas prevalent in the Euphrates Valley. The early Greeks had various legends describing how things in heaven and on the earth below were created. An immense intellectual step forward was taken when Aristarchus of Samos (270 B.C.) also Heracleides of Ponticus (4th Century B.C. dared to teach that the earth not only rotates on its own axis daily but revolves annually round the Sun. This was too advanced a view and therefore the Greek astronomers like Hipparchus and Ptolemy held to the older conception of a central fixed earth and revolving Heavens.
Rudiments of early cosmogony exist in the Srimad-Bhāgvata wherein, according to a legend, the Emperor Priyavrata, son of Manu, saw one day that the movement of the sun round Mount Sumeru could light only half the portion of the earth and sky (loka and aloka), the other half remaining in darkness all the time. This arrangement he did not like. So he decided to change the night into day. Thus planning, he mounted on a powerful chariot, as shining and mobile as the sun himself, and took seven rounds on the earth itself. He was a monarch rich and powerful in spirit. The marks left by the wheels of his chariot on earth became seven seas and the elevations in between seven islands. According to popular saying, he did this so that the living beings may not quarrel among themselves and demarcated the boundaries of each by separate rivers, mountains and forests. This is about how the seven seas and seven islands came into being. About the bigger theme of the origin of the universe, in the Hindu view, it is the handiwork of the Creator-God Brahmma assisted by the great technologist Visvakarma. This CreatorGod in the Hindu pantheon stands distinctly apart from the ProtectorGod which is Visnu and the God of Destruction, Rudra, there being a sort of division of labour between the three; and interestingly enough the Creater-God himself is created on a lotus-stalk arising out of the navel of the Protector-God Visnu. The strong mythological elements in all the above stands is too clear to be separately stressed. In contrast, the Jaina savants had perhaps no great problem about cosmogony since in their view the entire universe is not a thing created but a thing perpe