Tag: Hindu Cosmology
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Nakshatras: The Twenty-Seven Lunar Mansions
The nakshatras divide the sky by the moon’s monthly circuit rather than the sun’s yearly one. This is the older Indian system, and it is still the one that decides names and weddings.
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Pralaya: What Happens When the Universe Dissolves
Pralaya is dissolution, and the tradition describes several kinds. None of them is an ending in the sense the word usually carries.
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Brahmanda: Universes Inside Universes
Brahmanda, the cosmic egg, is not described in the Puranas as unique. Multiple, sometimes infinite, cosmic eggs are said to exist simultaneously.
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The Fourteen Lokas: Mapping a Vertical Universe
Seven worlds above and seven below make up the Puranic cosmos. Reading them as physical locations misses that they are also described as states.
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Why the Devas Came After the World and Not Before It
In several Vedic and Puranic accounts, the devas are described as arising within creation, not as its authors. The ordering is philosophically deliberate.
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Hiranyagarbha: Why Creation Is Called a Birth and Not a Making
The Rig Veda names the source of the cosmos a golden womb, not a workshop. The choice of metaphor carries a specific claim about how the world comes to be.
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Avidya and Maya: The Personal Veil and the Cosmic One
Vedanta uses two words for the covering over reality. One operates at the scale of the cosmos, the other at the scale of a single mind.
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Why Order Is Described as Discovered Rather Than Imposed
Rta is the Vedic term for cosmic order, and the texts are careful never to describe it as legislated by anyone, including the gods.
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Rta and Satya: Cosmic Order Against Spoken Truth
Rta is the order that holds the cosmos together. Satya is truth as spoken by people. The Vedas keep them distinct, and the distinction still does useful work.
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Why Creation Begins With Sound and Not Light
Most origin accounts begin with light appearing. The Indian accounts begin with vibration, and the choice has consequences that run through the whole tradition.
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Why a Tradition Would Preserve Its Own Uncertainty for Three Thousand Years
The Rig Veda’s oldest creation hymn ends by admitting it might be wrong. Every generation since has had the chance to edit that out, and none did.
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Why the Rig Veda Ends Its Creation Hymn With a Doubt
The oldest creation account in the tradition finishes by wondering whether anyone knows, including whoever presides over it. That ending is the most remarkable thing about it.
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Nasadiya Sukta, Line by Line
Seven verses, about a hundred and twenty words, and the most philosophically austere creation account in any ancient literature. Read slowly, it moves in a deliberate sequence.