CHAPTER IX.

THE PURANIC ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION.

BEFORE passing on to the inferior deities, an account of the creation will be given. It is not at all easy to make out a consistent one from the Hindu scriptures, because the imagination of the writers seems to have run wild on this subject; not having any authority, each writer has written what seemed good to himself. As in the accounts of the deities, the germs are found in the older books of what is told at considerable length in the more recent. The following hymn from the Rig-Veda [**] describes the primal condition of things before the creative power of the Deity was exercised:--

"There was neither aught nor naught, nor air, nor sky beyond.
What covered all? Where rested all? In watery gulf profound?
Nor death was then, nor deathlessness, nor change of night and day.
The One breathed calmly, self-sustained; nought else beyond it lay.

"Gloom, hid in gloom, existed first--one sea, eluding view.
That One, a void in chaos wrapt, by inward fervour grew.
Within it first arose desire, the primal germ of mind,
Which nothing with existence links, as sages searching find.

"The kindling ray that shot across the dark and drear abyss--
Was it beneath? or high aloft? What bard can answer this?
There fecundating powers were found, and mighty forces strove--
A self-supporting mass beneath, and energy above.

"Who knows, who ever told, from whence this vast creation rose?
No gods had then been born--who then can e'er the truth disclose?
Whence sprang this world, and whether framed by hand divine or no--
Its lord in heaven alone can tell, if even he can show."

This hymn contains perhaps the earliest speculations of the Hindus respecting the creation that have come down to us; and the wise conclusion was arrived at that God alone knew how the world came into being. But as time went on this confession of ignorance did not satisfy the cravings of the human mind: hence succeeding ages sought by its conjectures, which are given with the assurance of exact knowledge, to throw light upon the unknowable.

The next quotation is from the "Purusha Sakta" of the Rig-Veda, which from its thought and language is generally believed to be of much later origin than the preceding hymn.