Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 2.djvu/54

 18

HISTORY OF INDIA.

[Book IV.

ci'tiatioiJ.

A.D. — undiminished glory, dispelling the gloom. He, whom tlie mind alone can per- ceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, wlio Account of exists ft'om eternity, even He, the soul of all beings, v/liom no being can com- prehend, shone forth in person. He having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters, and ])laced in them a productive seed, which became an egg, bright as gold, blazing- like the luminary with a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born himself the great forefather of all spirits."

Having proceeded thus far, Menu stops to explain that the waters were called oiara, because they were the production of Nara (or the spirit of God), and that because they were his first ayctna (or place of motion), he is named Narayana (or moving on the ivaters), and then continues: — " From that which is, the first cause, not tlie object of sense, existing, not existing, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male, famed in all worlds under the appellation of Brahma. In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year, at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed the heaven and the earth ; in the midst the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of waters." The mate- rial world having been thus created by Brahma, " from the supreme soul he drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by sense, immaterial, and consciousness, the internal monitor, the ruler."

What follows is so indistinct and elliptical that a gap in the original may be suspected; and therefore without continuing to quote, it will be sufficient to give the substance of what is most remarkable in the subsequent part of this account of the creation, Brahma having produced the great soul and all vital forms, the perceptions of sense, and the five organs of sensation, and pervaded " with emanations from the supreme Spirit, the minutest portion of six prin- ciples immensely operative," framed all creatures, and assigned to them " distinct names, distinct acts, and distinct occupations." Supreme over all, " he created an assemblage of inferior deities, with divine attributes and pm-e souls, and a number of genii exquisitely delicate." From fire, from air, and from the sun, he "milked out the three primordial Vedas," gave being "to time and the divi- sions of time, to the stars also, and to the planets, to rivers, oceans, and moun- tains, to level plains and uneven valleys; to devotion, speech, complacency, desire, and wrath," and to creation generally, for all came into existence simply because " He willed " it. Moreover, for the sake of distinguishing actions, he "made a total diflference between right and wrong," and inured sentient crea- tures " to pleasure and pain, and other opposite pairs." Thus all was "composed in fit order," for " in whatever occupation the supreme Lord first employed any vital soul, to that occupation the same soul attaches itself spontaneously, when it receives a new body again and again ; whatever quality, noxious or innocent, harsh or mild, unjust or just, false or true, he conferred on any being the same

Creation of inferior divinities.