He knows it—or perchance even He knows it not.”
—The Rig-Veda, book 10, hymn 129. Translated from Max Mullers' “Chips from a German Workshop.”
This is Pantheistic throughout, and although it presents no absurd combinations of matter and spirit, yet it puts the material creation before the creation of the spiritual, and scarcely allows consciousness to “the One,” “the It,” from which, somehow, the creation proceeded. The Book of Menu, which is of equal value with the Veda among the Hindoos, gives the following account of the creation:
“Menu sat reclined, with his attention fixed on one object, the supreme God, when the divine sages approached him, and, after mutual salutations in due form, delivered the following address: Deign, sovereign ruler, to apprise us of the sacred laws in their order, as they must be followed by all the four classes, and by each of them, in their several degrees, together with the duties of every mixed class; for thou, Lord, and thou only among mortals, knowest the true sense, the first principle, and the prescribed ceremonies of this universal, supernatural Veda, unlimited in extent and unequalled in authority.
“He whose powers were measureless, being thus requested by the great sages, whose thoughts were profound, saluted them all with reverence and gave them a comprehensive answer, saying: Be it heard! This universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep; then the sole, self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding his idea or dispelling the gloom. He, whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has not visible parts, who exists from eternity, even he, the soul of all beings, whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first, with a thought, created the waters and placed in them a productive seed; that seed became an egg bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams; and in that egg he was born [pg 063] himself in the form of Brahma the great forefather of all spirits. The waters were called nara, because they were the production of Nara, or the spirit of God; and, since they were his first ayana, or place of motion, he thence is named Nayrayana, or moving on the waters. From that which is, the first cause, not the object of sense, existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male, famed in all worlds under the appellation of Brahma. In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the Creator, at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of waters.
“From the supreme soul he drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by sense, immaterial; and before mind, or the reasoning power, he produced consciousness, the internal monitor, the ruler; and before them both he produced the great principle of the soul, or first expansion of the divine idea; and all vital forms endued with the three qualities of goodness, passion and darkness; and the five perceptions of sense, and the five organs of sensation. Thus, having at once pervaded, with emanations from the Supreme Spirit, the minutest portions of six principles immensely operative, consciousness and the five perceptions, he framed all creatures; and since the minutest particles of visible nature have a dependence on those six emanations from God, the wise have accordingly given the name of S'arira, or depending on six, that is, the ten organs on consciousness, and the five elements on as many perceptions, to his image or appearance in visible nature; thence proceed the great elements, endued with peculiar powers, the mind with operations infinitely subtile, the unperishable cause of all apparent forms.
“This universe, therefore, is compacted from the minute portions of these seven divine and active principles, the great soul, or first emanation, consciousness, and five perceptions; a mutable universe from immutable ideas. Among them each succeeding [pg 064] element acquires the quality of the preceding; and in as many degrees as each of them is advanced, with so many properties is it said to be endued. He, too, first assigned to all creatures distinct names, distinct acts, and distinct occupations, as they had been revealed in the pre-existing Veda. He, the supreme ruler, created an assemblage of inferior Deities, with divine attributes and pure souls, and a number of Genii exquisitely delicate; and he prescribed the sacrifice from the beginning. From fire, from air, and from the sun he milked out, as it were, three primordial Vedas, named Rich, Yajush and Saman, for the due performance of the sacrifice.
“He gave being to time and the divisions of time, to the stars also, and to the planets, to rivers, oceans and mountains, to level plains and uneven valleys, to devotion, speech, complacency, desire and wrath, and to the creation, which shall presently be mentioned; for he willed the existence of all those created things. For the sake of distinguishing actions, he made a total difference between right and wrong, and enured these sentient creatures to pleasure and pain, cold and heat, and other opposite pairs. With very minute transformable portions called matras, of the five elements, all this perceptible world was composed in fit order; and in whatever occupation the Supreme Lord first employed any vital soul, to that occupation the same soul attaches itself spontaneously when it receives a new body again and again. Whatever quality, noxious or innocent, harsh or mild, unjust or just, false or true, he conferred on any being at its creation, the same quality enters it, of course, on its future births; as the six seasons of the year attain respectively their peculiar marks in due time and of their own accord, even so the several acts of each embodied spirit attend it naturally.
“That the human race might be multiplied, he caused the Brahmen, the Cshatriya, the Vaisya and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arm, his thigh and his foot.
“Having divided his own substance, the mighty power became half male, half female, or nature active and passive, and from that female he produced Viraz. Know me, O most excellent [pg 065] of Brahmens, to be that person whom the male power, Viraz, having performed austere devotion, produced by myself; me, the secondary framer of all this visible world. It was I who, desirous of giving birth to a race of men, performed very difficult religious duties, and first produced ten Lords of created beings, animated in holiness, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Cratu, Prachetas, or Dacsha, Vasishtha, Bhrigu and Narada; they, abundant in glory, produced seven other Menu, together with deities and the mansions of deities, and Maharshis, or great sages, unlimited in power; benevolent genii, and fierce giants, blood-thirsty savages, heavenly quiristers, nymphs and demons, huge serpents and snakes of smaller size, birds of mighty wing, and separate companies of Pitirs, or progenitors of mankind; lightnings and thunder-bolts, clouds and colored bows of Indra, falling meteors, earth-rending vapors, comets and luminaries of various degrees; horse-faced sylvans, apes, fish, and a variety of birds, tame cattle, deer, men, and ravenous beasts with two rows of teeth; small and large reptiles, moths, lice, fleas, and common flies, with every biting knat and immovable substances of distinct sorts.”