hands (supâni III. 54, 12, sugabhasti VI. 49, 9); and even as a smith, forging the thunder-bolt for Indra (I. 32, 2). But he is also the maker of the world and of all creatures in it. Thus we read, Rv. III. 55, 19: Devas tvashta savita visvarûpah ** 1 The god Tvashtar, the enlivener, endowed with many forms, has nourished the creatures and produced them in many ways; all these worlds are his.' And again, Våg. Samh. XXIX. 9: Tvashta idam visvam bhuvanam gagâna, 'Tvashtar has begotten this whole world.' Another god who is often put prominently forward as the maker of the world is Visvakarman, literally the All-maker, who is afterwards called Pragâpati, lord of creatures (Sat. Br. VIII. 2, 1, 10). Of him we read, Rv. X. 81, 2; What was the stand on which he rested, how was it and where, from whence the all-seeing Visvakarman, creating the earth, disclosed the sky by his power?' 'The god who has eyes on every side, and a face on every side, and arms on every side, and feet on every side, when he creates heaven and earth, being alone, he forges them with his arms and with wings (used as bellows)'.' 'What was the wood, what was the tree whence they fashioned heaven and earth 23 Search, O sages, 1 Muir, iv. 5. * See also Rv. X. 31, 7, where the same line occurs followed by another, the two, heaven and earth, stand together and do not grow old for ever; but days and dawns have waxed old.' in your mind for that on which he stood when establishing the worlds.' : Soon, however, the thought appears that all these questions are of no avail, and that no one can discover the secret of creation. Thus the poet of this very hymn finishes by saying リム "You will not know him who produced these worlds; something else is within you; the chanters of hymns move about enveloped in mist, talking vaguely and enjoying life.' Emanation or Srishfi. There is, however, a second stream of ideas which likewise comes to the surface in the Veda. The world is spoken of as having been originally water without light (salilam apraketam), and very soon water is mentioned as the beginning of all things. But in this very same hymn (X. 129), the poet admits that no one knows, and no one can declare whence this creation sprang. The gods even came after it. and he who is called the seer in the highest heaven, even he may know, or he may not know. The very word which we generally translate by creation teaches us a lesson. It is visrishti, and, comes from a root srig, which means simply to let out, so that visrishti comes much nearer to emana-, tion or even evolution than to creation. The idea that water was the beginning of the. world became soon very popular. It is said in the Rig-veda 'the waters contained a germ from which everything else sprang forth' (Rv. X. 82, 5-6; X. 121,7). Golden Egg. In the Brahmanas we find it plainly stated that this (universe) was in the beginning water, 'Âpo ha vâ idam agre salilam âsa.' From the water arose a golden egg, which floated about for a year. Then a male arose and this was Pragâpati, the lord of creatures. He divided the golden egg and floated about in it for another year. He then spoke those words, bhûr, bhuvah and svar, and by them he created the earth, the firmament, and the sky. This golden egg too became a very favourite topic. Thus we read in the Khandogya-Upanishad III. 191: 'In the beginning this was not. It became, it grew. I turned into an egg. The egg lay for the time of a year. It broke open. The two halves were one of silver, the other of gold. The silver one became this earth, the golden one the sky, the thick membrane (of the white) the mountains, the thin membrane (of the yoke) the mist with the clouds, the small veins the rivers, the fluid the sea. When 'And what was born from it was the sun. he was born shouts of hurrah arose, and all beings arose, and all things which they desired. Therefore whenever the sun rises and sets, shouts of hurrah arise, and all beings arise, and all things which they desire.' The idea of the world beginning as an egg is sO natural that we cannot be surprised when we meet with it again and again in different parts of the world where historical communication seems out of the This is paraphrased in Manu I. 9–13. question. We read in the famous Finnish epic, the Kalevala 1: From the lower half of the egg The yellow that is in the egg Shall beam softly as moon in the sky; Stars may come in the sky.' Some scholars suppose that the Fins borrowed this idea from their Slavonic neighbours, especially the Lituanians, but Castrén accepts it as of Finnish origin. If we turn to Egypt, we find that there also the sun is represented as an egg. Râ, the sun-god, is invoked: 'O Râ, in thine egg, radiant in thy disk, shining forth from the horizon, swimming over the steel firmament-thou who producest the winds by the flames of thy mouth, and who enlightenest the world with thy splendours, save the departed,' etc. In the Orphic mythology the mundane egg is frequently mentioned, but from what sources the Orphic poets took their ideas is as yet very doubtful. The Brahmanas are overflowing with similar speculations, all mere guesses at truth, it is true, but all flowing from the same conviction that the phenomenal world is not the real world, or, at all events, that behind what we see and know there is something which we do not see and which we do not know, that there is something real behind the contingent. In the beginning, the Brahmanas say, there was the real, the sat, that 1 Castrén, Finnische Mythologie, p. 289; Kellgren, Mythus de oro mundano, Helsingforsiae, 1849. 'Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, p. 190.. which truly is, and from it came all that now is or seems to be. Here we see the root of the cosmological argument; and the whole history of religious thought, thus running in that self-made channel, seems to me stronger than any elaborate argument. It may be quite true, as Kant holds, that the category of causality is applicable to the deliverances of the senses only, and that therefore we cannot logically prove the existence of an extra-mundane cause. But if the human mind has once formed the concept of phenomena and of a phenomenal world, that very word and concept implies the admission of something non-phenomenal, or noumenal, whatever we may call it. If there were no phenomena at all, if the world had not been seen through and found out to be transparent, then the case would be different, and Kant would be right in his demolition of the cosmological argument; but so long as we speak of the phenomenal, as Kant does himself, we speak at the same time of the non-phenomenal. It is this non-phenomenal, or trans-phenomenal, which the cosmological argument postulates, and has postulated through all ages; and it is this postulate, this craving for something more real than this so-called real world, which in itself is more convincing to me than any subtle argumentation in support of what is called the First Cause of all causes. Ask yourselves, Can you imagine the craving of hunger in nature unless there was something in nature to satisfy that hunger? I go even further, and ask, Can you imagine an eye without light, or an ear without sound? Neither can we imagine this craving for the Unseen, the Unheard, the Unperceived, or the Infinite, unless there was |