INDIAN  PHILOSOPHY

BY

DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN


(EXCERPT ON THE CREATION HYMN OF THE RIG VEDA)


(Dr.S.Radhakrishnan was a distinguished philosopher, statesman and writer. He is the 
translator of The Dhammapada (OUP), and he was for many years a professor at Oxford 
University, before becoming the President of India.)


THE HYMNS OF THE RIG VEDA

COSMOLOGY


The Vedic thinkers were not unmindful of the philosophical problems of the origin and 
nature of the world. In their search for the first ground of all changing things, they, 
like the ancient Greeks, looked upon water, air, etc., as the ultimate elements out of 
which the variety of the world is composed. Water is said to develop into the world 
through the force of time, samvatsara or year, desire or kama, intelligence or purusa, 
warmth or tapas. Sometimes water itself is derived from night or chaos, tamas, or air. 
In x. 72 the world ground is said to be the asat, or the non-existent, with which is 
identified Aditi, the infinite. All that exists is diti, or bounded, while the a-diti, 
the infinite, is non-existent. From the infinite, cosmic force arises, though the latter 
is sometimes said to be the source of the infinite itself. These theories, however, soon 
related themselves to the non-physical, and physics by alliance with religion became 
metaphysics.


In the pluralistic stage the several gods, Varuna, Indra, Agni, Visvakarman, were 
looked upon as the authors of the universe. The method of creation is differently 
conceived. Some gods are supposed to build the world as the carpenter builds a house. 
The question is raised as to how the tree or the wood out of which the work was built 
was obtained.5 At a later stage the answer is given that Brahman is the tree and the 
wood out of which heaven and earth are made.The conception of organic growth or development 
is also now and then suggested. Sometimes the gods are said to create the world by the 
power of sacrifice. This perhaps belongs to a later stage of Vedic thought.


When we get to the monotheistic level the question arises as to whether God created the 
world out of His own nature without any pre-existent matter or through His power acting 
on eternally pre-existent matter. The former view takes us to the higher monistic 
conception, while the latter remains at the lower monotheistic level, and we have views 
in the Vedic hymns. In x. 121 we have an account of the creation of the world by an 
Omnipotent God out of pre-existent matter. Hiranyagarbha arose in the beginning from 
the great water which pervaded the universe. He evolved the beautiful world from the 
shapeless chaos which was all that existed. But how did it happen, it is asked, that 
the chaos produced Hiranyagarbha ? What is that unknown force or law of development 
which led to his rise ? Who is the author of the primeval waters ? According to Manu, 
Harivamsa and the Puranas, God was the author of chaos. He created it by His Will, and 
deposited a seed in it which became the golden germ in which He Himself was born as the 
Brahma or the Creator God. "I am Hiranyagarbha, the Supreme Spirit Himself become 
manifested in the form of Hiranyagarbha." Thus the two eternally  co-existent substances 
seem to be the evolution of the one ultimate substratum.


This is exactly the theory of a later hymn called the Nasadiya hymn, which is translated
by Max Muller.

There was then neither what is nor what is not, there was no sky, nor the heaven which is 
beyond. What covered ? Where was it, and in whose shelter ? Was the water the deep abyss 
(in which it lay) ?


There was no death, hence was there nothing immortal. There was no light (distinction) 
between night and day. That One breathed by itself without breath, other than it there 
has been nothing.


Darkness there was, in the beginning all this was a sea without light; the germ that lay 
covered by the husk, that One was born by the power of heat (tapas).


Love overcame it in the beginning, which was the seed springing from mind, poets having 
searched in their heart found by wisdom the bond of what is in and what is not.


Their ray which was stretched across, was it below or was it above ? There were seed bearers, 
there were powers, self-power below, and will above.


Who then knows, who has declared it here, from whence was born this Creation ? The gods 
came later than this creation, who then knows whence it arose ?


He from whom this creation arose, whether he made it or did not make it, the highest seer 
in the highest heaven, he forsooth knows, or does even he not know ?


We find in this hymn a representation of the most advanced theory of creation. First of 
all there was no existent or non-existent. The existent in its manifested aspect was not 
then. We cannot on that account call it the non-existent, for it is positive being from 
which the whole existence arrives. The first line brings out the inadequacy of our categories.
The absolute reality which is at the back of the whole world cannot be characterised by us as 
either existent or non-existent. The one breathed breathless by its own power. 1 Other than 
that there was not anything beyond. First  cause of all it is older than the whole world, 
with the sun, moon, sky and stars. It is beyond time, beyond space, beyond age, beyond death 
and beyond immortality. We cannot express what it is except that it is. Such is the primal 
unconditioned groundwork of all being. Within that Absolute Consciousness there is first 
the fact of affirmation or positing of the primal "I". This corresponds to the logical law 
of identity, A is A, the validity of which presupposes the original self-positing.


Immediately there must be also a non-ego as the correlate of the ego. The I Confronts the 
not-I, which answers to "A" is not B." The "I" will be a bare affirmation, a mere abstraction, 
unless there is another of which it is conscious. If there is no other, there is no ego. 
The ego implies non-ego as its condition. This opposition of ego and non-ego is the primary 
antithesis, and the development of this implication from the Absolute is said to be by tapas. 
Tapas is just the "rushing forth," the spontaneous "out-growth," the projection of being 
into existence, the energising impulse, the innate spiritual fervour of the Absolute. Through 
this tapas we get being and non-being, the I and the not-I, the active Purusa and the 
passive prakrti, the formative principle and the chaotic matter. The rest of the evolution 
follows from the interaction of these two opposed principles. According to the hymn, desire 
constitutes the secret of the being of the world. Desire or kama is the sign of s
elf-consciousness, the germ of the mind, manaso retah. It is the ground of all advance, 
the spur of progress. The self-conscious ego has desires developed in it by the presence 
of the non-ego. Desire is more than thought. It denotes intellectual stir, the sense of 
deficiency as well as active effort. It is the bond binding to the existent to the 
non-existent. The unborn, the one, the eternal breaks forth into a self-conscious Brahma 
with matter, darkness, non-being, zero, chaos opposed to it. Desire is the essential 
feature of this self-conscious Purusa. The last phrase, "ko veda?" ("who knows?") brings 
out the mystery of creation which has led later thinkers to call it maya.


There are hymns which stop with the two principles of Purusa and prakrti. In x. 82 5-6, 
of the hymn to Visvakarman, we find it said that the waters of the sea contained the first
or primordial germ. This first germ is the world egg floating on the primeval waters of 
chaos, the principle of the universe of life. From it arises Visvakarman, the firstborn 
of the universe, the creator and maker of the world. The waters are the chaos of the 
Greeks, the "without-form and void" of Genesis, with the infinite will reposing on it. 2 
Desire, will, self-consciousness, mind, vak, or the word, all these are the qualities of 
the infinite intelligence, the personal God brooding over the waters, the Narayana resting 
on the eternal Ananta. It is the god of Genesis who says, "Let there be, and there was." 
He thought, I will create the worlds, then He created those various worlds, water, light, 
etc." The Nasadiya hymn, however, overcomes the dualistic metaphysics in a higher monism. 
It makes nature and spirit both aspects of the one Absolute. The Absolute itself is neither 
the self nor the other, is neither self-consciousness of the type of I, nor unconsciousness 
of the type of not-I. It is a higher than both these. It is a transcending consciousness. 
The opposition is developed within itself. According to this account the steps of creation, 
when translated into modern terms, are : (1) the Highest Absolute; (2) the bare 
self-consciousness, I am I; (3) the limit of self-consciousness is the form of another. 
This does not mean that there is a particular point at which the Absolute moves out. The 
stages are only logically but not chronologically successive. The ego implies the non-ego, 
and therefore cannot precede it. Nor can the non-ego precede the ego. Nor can the Absolute 
be ever without doing tapas. The timeless whole is ever breaking out in a series of becomings, 
and the process will go on till the self reaffirms itself absolutely in the varied content 
of experience which is never going to be. So the world is always restless. The hymn tells 
us the how of creation, not the whence. It is an explanation of the fact of creation.3    
                                                                  

We see clearly that there is no basic for any conception of the unreality of the world in 
the hymns of the Rg-Veda. The world is not a purposeless phantasm, but is just the evolution 
of God. Wherever the word maya occurs, it is used only to signify the might or the power: 
"Indra takes many shapes quickly by his maya."2 Yet sometimes maya and its derivatives, 
mayin, mayavant, are employed to signify the will of the demons, and we also find the 
word used in the sense of illusion or show. The main tendency of the Rg-Veda is a naïve 
realism. Later Indian thinkers distinguish five elements, ether or akasa, air, fire, 
water and earth. But the Rg-Veda postulates only one, water. It is the primeval matter 
from which others slowly develop.


It is obviously wrong to think that according to the hymn we discussed there was originally 
non-being from out of which being grew. The first condition is not absolute non-existence, 
for the hymn admits the reality of the one breathing breathless by itself. It is their way 
of describing the absolute reality, the logical ground of the whole universe. Being and 
non-being, which are correlative terms, cannot be applied to the One which is beyond all 
opposition. Non-being only means whatever now visibly exists had then no distinct existence. 
In x.72 I, it is said, "the existent sprang from the non-existence. In x.72  I, it is said, 
"the existent sprang from the non-existent." Even here it does not mean being comes from 
non-being but only that distinct being comes from non-distinct being. So we do not agree 
with the view that the hymn is "the starting-point of the natural philosophy which developed 
into the Samkhya system."


The creation of the world is sometimes traced to an original material as it were; in the 
Purusa Sukta we find that the gods are the agents of creation, while the material out of 
which the world is made is the body of the great Purusa. The act of creation is treated 
as a sacrifice in which Purusa is the victim. "Purusa is all this world, what has been 
and shall be."5 Anthropomorphism when once it is afoot cannot be kept within bounds, 
and the imagination of the Indian brings out the greatness of his God by giving him 
huge dimensions. The poetic mind conjures up a vast composition pointing out the oneness 
of the whole, world and God. This hymn is not, however, inconsistent with the theory of 
creation from the One Absolute described above. The whole world even according to it is 
due to the self-diremption of the Absolute into subject and object, Purusa and Prakrti. 
Only the idea is rather crudely allegorised. The supreme reality becomes the active Purusa, 
for it said: "From the Purusa Virat was born, and from Virat again Purusa." Purusa is thus 
the begetter as well as the begotten. He is the Absolute as well as the self-conscious I.

1.	Aristotle's unmoved mover.

2.	Greek mythology, it is interesting to notice, connects Eros, the god of love, 
        corresponding to Kama, with the creation of the universe. Plato says in his 
        Symposium: Eros neither had any parents nor is he said by any unlearned men or 
        by any poet to have had any " According to Aristotle, God moves as the object 
        of desire.

3.	With this the conception of a Demiurge, as used by Plato in the Timaeus. The 
        conception of creative imagination, set forth by E.Douglas Fawcett in his two 
        books, The World as Imagination and Divine Imagining, may also be compared.