Creation (Srishti Vignana)

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In this complex world, there are many complex questions that man has been keen to find answers for. The se complex questions and possible answers to them have formed the central idea of many works. Many a book have been written on these various complex commonly found question in all is, “How did this Universe come into being?”

This question is the fundamental question of science.

It then leads to further questions namely, “How big is this Universe? Where is our earth in this Universe? How did all the stars appear? How did man evolve? Will this all stay as is? Where will the Universe go from here?

These very questions and their range and their range and depth have rattled us since time immemorial. Many thinkers who had been thinking of beyond this world or earth, have thought of this rang of question and have tried to give an answer in their own way for their times, for their civilizations.

The medieval world, especially Europe, came up with their own explanation of how this world came to be created, given their times and their thought process. As the civilizations evolved, newer thought processes have also been evolving.

Today, the modern world calls the point of emergence as the Big Bang. In this modern scientific world, many laboratories such as the CERN Laboratory of Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland and the Fermi National Laboratory in the United States have been conducting various experiments from a scientific manner, as to what really happened in the immediate moments after the Big Bang.

At Bharath Gyan, one among the various subjects we have been working on, is the ancient knowledge base and the ancient Indian understanding of Creation.

The Indian civilization is one of the oldest and continuing civilizations of the world. The Indian civilization, also through its own process of enquiry over thousands of years ago, had come up with their explanation of how the Universe must have been created. When we look at the details of the explanation of the process of creation as given by the various texts of the Indian civilization, namely the Veda, Purana and all other adjunct texts, we see a remarkable, striking similarity to what the modern scientists are talking about today, as to how this Universe came to be.

The word Srishti, comes from the root word srj.

Srj means “to create, to produce” and Vignana means “specialised knowledge”. Srishti Vignana is the specialised knowledge of the Creation of the Universe.

In this book, we shall look at the various attempts across times and civilizations, to understand the most complex question of all. We shall look at the medieval European view that has been clouding our minds for long, after which we shall see the different stories of creation from the ancient world focusing primarily on the traditional Indian concepts of Creation, juxtaposing it with the modern scientific view.

As we place the various thoughts side by side, we get to see a striking similarity between the thoughts of the modern scientists and that of the traditional Indian scholars, on how this Universe came to be.

Apart from being amazed at the similarities, the one thought that immediately comes to our mind is that how did the ancient Rishi, seer scientists, come up with this understanding, that too with the right and apt scientific names of their times and also a few notches more in depth than the present scientific understanding?

When we say a few notches more in depth, we mean the clues from the traditional Indian thought that the modern scientists could use in their research.

Their approach seems to be truly out of this world and is indeed mind boggling.

The most 0prominent of the Indian descriptions, for the process of Creation, is in the Rig Veda, wherein, it speaks of how the unmanifested gave rise to all the manifested.

Let us now, journey back in time and see how this Creation came to be!

Foreword

Scientific research and spiritual pursuit have one thin in common; both try to arrive at the absolute truth. Scientific research does this through observation and analyzing details in rational manner to arrive at the cause and effect; while, in spirituality one looks inward and tries to find answers to the how and why of things.

It is an established fact that the ancient civilization which existed nearly 500 years ago in India possessed a rich treasure of knowledge. The Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas etc., speak volumes in the wisdom and knowledge our ancestors had. It is amazing to note that they knew the existence of planets, stars, galaxies and their state of motion. Many of the slokas in Vedas give a feeling that the Rishis had a good understanding of the origin of the universe.

The Vedas say that there was sunya or vacuum to start with then akasha (gas) evolved; gases combined to give fire from which water, elements of earth and so on evolved. One can perhaps draw a parallel to the Big Bang theory here. If one looks at Dashavathara it has a close resemblance to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

Propagation of such rich knowledge which has existed in the past has been the real issue. Vedas and Upanishads in the form of Sanskrit slokas were passed on by word of mouth. Also, Sanskrit was the language of the elite.

Only in the last 1000 years or so only it has been put into written text. Moreover, learning such texts and further research also has not taken place significantly.

With such a background it is commendable that D. K. Hari & D. K. Hema Hari have taken the initiative in researching such ancient scriptures in detail and trying to interpret some of them in the light of modern scientific observations. The task is so vast that it will take ages to decipher them. The book is a good attempt in understanding ancient scriptures and exposing the associated challenges. It will be a gook pointer to those who want to undertaker further research on the topic.