The Creation Myth of the Rig Veda

Abstract

THE ORGANIZATION of the universe and its beginnings, as understood by Vedic man, have scarcely been revealed to us. An examination of scientific works on the religion, philosophy, and cosmography of the Rig Veda shows that little more is known than that the universe was considered to be composed of the earth surface, the atmospheric region, and the sky surface. For a theory of the origin of this we are hardly referred to any more than a few late hymns of the Rig Veda (10. 129; 10. 72; and others), which are modestly metaphysical in character and represent no full exposition of the topic, and doubtless nothing that is primary. It is my belief, however, that a fair amount of information is available in the text itself if we can rightly arrange and interpret the allusions which it offers. In a paper which I read at the SOCIETY'S meetings last year I endeavored to enlarge our knowledge of the Vedic man's conception of the universe (JAOS 61. 76-80), and today I shall try to deal with the topic of Rigvedic Cosmogony. The universe, as the Rigvedic man saw it, was in two parts. One, being that in which the gods and men live, consisted of the earth's broad surface, the vault of the sky over it, and the atmosphere between the two. This he called the Sat, 'the Existent.' Below the earth, reached by a great chasm, was a place of horror, inhabited only by demons, and this he called the Asat 'the NonExistent.' The creatures of the two regions were in a natural state of enmity with one another, and the two regions themselves were antithetical. In the Sat were light, warmth, moisture-requisites for life-and these and all the phenomena of nature concerned with their appearance and use were subject to a body of universal cosmic law called the rta. To make the Sat operate perfectly every creature had his duty, his personal function (vrata), and when he lived by it he was an observer of the rta (rtavan). The result for him, whether man or god, was life, growth, prosperity. In the Asat, the Non-Existent, the essentials for life and growth were lacking. There were cold, darkness, drouth; and the place was without cosmic law (anrta). Decay and death marked it, and the creatures there looked for every opportunity to injure the rta-observing beings of the earth and sky. Besides this system and organization there was the principle of life that was in the universe, distinguishing the animate from the inanimate. All of this is not treated in the Rig Veda in an ordered and scientific exposition, for the Rig Veda is not a scientific treatise. But in the hymns of that work, meant to help man adjust himself to the conditions imposed in consequence of this cosmic dichotomy, are sufficient hints to let us identify these fundamental conceptions.1 Again, by reason of the Rig Veda's purpose, that work never reveals to us in a consecutive narrative the theory of how the universe came to exist or relates a myth associated with that theory. Yet there must have been a theory or a myth of creation, and if we have not yet succeeded in identifying it,2 we may at least continue to try, hoping to piece together in a coherent whole the numerous allusions to the earliest happenings. In the hope that I may have lit upon some part of the sequence of units in the tale I offer here the results of my own effort to deduce it from the text, and no harm is done, I hope, if I happen to cast an old hero in a new part.