Alright so I'm not entirely sure what we're supposed to do/say on these blog posts so I'm just going to talk a little bit about what we read inside and outside of class.

 

Something that struck me in class was a certain line from the Rg Vedic Cosmology: Hymn 10.29. The sages have just spent the entire hymn asking questions about what “was there before there was anything on earth or the universe?” like "What stirred?" "Was there water, bottomlessly deep?" and so on. The sages provide some theories to the aforementioned question such as "Darkness was hidden by darkness" and "Poets in their heart seeking with wisdom found the bond of existence in non-existence” however they conclude that there is no possible way they could know or ever know. The ambiguity of this hymn is surprising to me. It offers no answers but rather proposes questions for the reader and it is up to the reader himself to reflect upon these unanswerable questions and synthesis his own theories. However this is not what gripped me about this particular hymn. What gripped me was one of the very last lines “the one who looks down on it (the creation of the universe) in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know” Now, for me, the sages definitively point to a higher being who watches over even the Gods themselves. This is interesting because even in polytheistic Hinduism, they seem to believe in a single higher being from which everything was created, or who at least knows how everything was created. Keep in mind the Vedas were composed/revealed from 1300 –300 BCE so this idea of a single almighty being could have been formed by the sages almost 1000 years before Judaism was formed, which is eye opening for me because I have always been taught that Judaism is the oldest monotheistic religion, in fact, I’ve been taught by some teachers that it was the first. This line seems to refute both teachings, at least on some level. Yes Hinduism is a polytheistic religion with the total number of Gods still being disputed by experts (although a passage in the Brhadaranyaka Upisad seems to point to 33) however the sages seem to acknowledge in this hymn that something MUST have come before these Gods, however they quickly point out, as is so typical in this hymn, that maybe even “he” might not know how everything was created or formed. Much like the hymn as a whole, this line only raises more questions with the reader, is there an almighty being? If yes did “he” create the universe or was her imply present when it as created? If he was only present then who or what created the universe itself? Of course these questions are unanswerable and the fundamental basis for every religion along with the question of “what is the meaning of life?” however, at least in this hymn, the question itself seems to be more important than the answer, and maybe that is the reason why Hinduism has endured so long and remained so popular. Hinduism asks questions, and questions are never right or wrong.

 

I realize that this is just a single line in an ocean of text and that the sages might have just been using the idea of an all-powerful God simply to illustrate that even “he” might not know the origin of the universe, however as someone who grew up in a Christian household and truth be told a Christian society I find it interesting that a religion seemingly on the other side of the world came up with the idea of a single all-knowing God, at least in some sense, long before Judaism was created.

 

To me this line points to the uniformity of mankind. We all as cultures have similar questions and even answers to these questions despite the seemingly vast differences in our people. We are all the same on a basic level, a single massive organism looking to the stars for answers to life’s greatest questions.

Then again, it is only a single line.

 



Comment, tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’m crazy or anything really. I’m curious to see if any of you guys think this is interesting as well. Oh and PLEASE tell me if I did the assignment wrong.