references for srishti, sthiti laya cycle or cyclic time in mantra, braamhaNa, aaraNyaka or upanishads

[Nagaraj Paturi]

My I request the scholars of the list to help me with the references for the cycle of srishti, sthiti, laya and back to the sequence or the idea of cyclic time in mantra, braamhaNa, aaraNyaka or upanishads.

There was this thread on the etymology of samvatsara:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/bvparishat/ShlEndPbeHs/FUXLd6SCBAAJ;context-place=pendingmsg/bvparishat

in

 http://www.dwc.knaw.nl/DL/publications/PU00010244.pdf

Prof. Gonda says that cyclic nature of time was known to the Vedic texts. 

My inquiry is as part of my thoughts on the recently shared article in the thread

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/bvparishat/OQqB3TGP42U/kpl-Y-WHAwAJ

Johannes Bronkhorst (2015), The historiography of Brahmanism

[K S Kannan]

The easiest ref. is of TU:

यतो वा इमानि भूतानि जायन्ते, 

येन जातानि जीवन्ति, 

यत् प्रयन्त्यभिसंविशन्तीति

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[K S Kannan]

How about

तज्जलानिति ?

[K S Kannan]

पुनः पुनर्जायमाना पुराणी

  suggests the cycle

[K S Kannan]

& even 

mRtyos sa mRtyumApnoti

betrays a cyclicity.

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks Prof. Kannan, for all the references. 

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Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Director,  Inter-Gurukula-University Centre , Indic Academy

BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS, Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Veliyanad, Kerala

BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.

Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies, 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education, 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

 

 

[V Subrahmanian]

मय्येव सकलं जातं मयि सर्वं प्रतिष्ठितम् । मयि सर्वं लयं याति तद् ब्रह्म अद्वयमस्म्यहम् ॥ - कैवल्योपनिषत् १-१९     

तज्जलानिति    -  Chandogya Upanishad 3.14.1  Bhashyam for this part:   तस्माद्ब्रह्मणो जातं तेजोबन्नादिक्रमेण सर्वम् ; अतः तज्जम् ; तथा तेनैव जननक्रमेण प्रतिलोमतया तस्मिन्नेव ब्रह्मणि लीयते तदात्मतया श्लिष्यत इति तल्लम् ; तथा तस्मिन्नेव स्थितिकाले, अनिति प्राणिति चेष्टत इति । एवं ब्रह्मात्मतया त्रिषु कालेष्वविशिष्टम् , तद्व्यतिरेकेणाग्रहणात् । अतः तदेवेदं जगत् । यथा च इदं तदेवैकमद्वितीयं तथा षष्ठे विस्तरेण वक्ष्यामः । यस्माच्च सर्वमिदं ब्रह्म, अतः शान्तः रागद्वेषादिदोषरहितः संयतः सन् , यत् तत्सर्वं ब्रह्म तत् वक्ष्यमाणैर्गुणैरुपासीत ।

Mundakopanishat 2.1.1  तदेतत्सत्यं यथा सुदीप्तात्पावकाद्विस्फुलिङ्गाः सहस्रशः प्रभवन्ते सरूपाः ।

तथाक्षराद्विविधाः सोम्य भावाः प्रजायन्ते तत्र चैवापियन्ति ॥ १ ॥    

Not exhaustive references. 

regards

[K S Kannan]

यस्मादिदं जगदजायत यत्र तिष्ठ-

      -त्यन्ते समस्तमिदमस्तमुपैति यत्र।

तस्मै नमस्सदसदादिविकल्पशून्य-

      -चैतन्यमात्रवपुषे पुरुषोत्तमाय।।‌‌‌‌‌‌‌

 is a verse from one of the "oldest" purANa-s.

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[K S Kannan]

In the text cited by VS,

the word yathA should have been shown as

a part of the verse quoted, I guess.

[shankara]

Paturi ji,

सूर्याचन्द्रमसौ धाता यथापूर्वमकल्पयत्  in the following Rigveda sukta, indicates previous creation.
Sayanabhashya - तदेत्सर्वं धाता विधाता यथापूर्वं पूर्वस्मिन् कल्पे अकल्पयत् सृष्टवान् तथैवागामिन्यपि कल्पे कल्पयिष्यतीत्यर्थः।

https://sa.wikisource.org/wiki/ऋग्वेदः_सूक्तं_१०.१९०

regards
shankara

[V Subrahmanian]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 1:52 PM K S Kannan <ks.kann...@gmail.com> wrote:

In the text cited by VS,

the word yathA should have been shown as

a part of the verse quoted, I guess.

If you are referring to this verse:  Mundakopanishat 2.1.1  तदेतत्सत्यं यथा सुदीप्तात्पावकाद्विस्फुलिङ्गाः सहस्रशः प्रभवन्ते सरूपाः ।

तथाक्षराद्विविधाः सोम्य भावाः प्रजायन्ते तत्र चैवापियन्ति ॥ १ ॥      the yathaa is the second word in the first line of the verse.  

regards

[K S Kannan]

Thank you for the clarification. Traveling as I was, I did not check with the text. Only made a guesswork - that the verse began as yathA sudIptAt. 

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[A K Kaul]

Respected Dr. Paturiji,

Jai Shri Ram!

Aghamarshana-Sukta of the Rigveda is very clear धाता यथा पूर्वं अकल्पयत् !

Similarly, the Purusha Sukta has described "Creation" in detail, and it appears to be talking about the earlier cycles of the same  in the end, but Acharya Sayana has interpreted it in a different way!

Regarding, "Samvatsarah"--in several Vedic texts, a year has been discussed in terms of "yajnya" itself especially since rituals were to be correlated to a "samvatsarah".  The Purusha Sukta says  पुरुषेवेदं सर्वं यद् भूतं यच्च भव्यं, but in the same breath it say, वसन्तो स्यासीदाज्यं ग्रीष्म इद्मः शरद्धविः  

With regards and Jai Shri Ram!

A K Kaul

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks to all for the references.

I am travelling. Will join back soon.

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[Nagaraj Paturi]

For those who are thinking of this, to see how this has been approached by western Indologists,

https://www.academia.edu/1538450/Cosmic_Cycles_Cosmology_and_Cosmography._2009  

may provide a clue. 

List members might also want to read 

this book  

by Mircea Eliade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade  

[rniyengar]

IMHO without first defining the word "cyclic", discussions and claims of 'cyclic time' are untenable. Let me explain my discomfort with this phrase. When we like to measure a long distance on ground, we make a mark and measure with a chain or tape that may be say 50 meters. (It is understood what meter, angula, yojana, Km means). We stretch the tape 3 times or 4 times and declare the length to be 3x50 or 4x50 meters. This concept of one dimensional space of equal length seems to have been extended to coin the phrase 'cyclic time'. In other words Time can be measured (with pre-defined units: kalA, mAsa, years, yuga, kalpa,.. and still other words) in terms of cycles of oscillations/changes/repititions, starting from a commonly accepted reference; but this does not make Time cyclic. In the MaitrayaNIya araNyaka we  read सूर्योयोनि: कालस्य but the text in the next sentence mentions about the form of time in terms of unit measures, nimeSa, vatsara etc. and advises कालं  ब्रह्मेत्युपासीत कालः तस्यातिदूरमपसरति ||

 I would be happy if members can clarify the concept of kAla, (not just the word) in the Vedas and also explain how and why that can be taken to be "cyclic".

Progeny, rebirth, pUrveyuge etc does not establish Time in the Vedas to be cyclic. For day to day use ( particularly for historicity of events) one may use such a phrase if there is common understanding of the technical words. 

Thanks

RN Iyengar

[Bijoy Misra]

Excellent point.  I had been looking for literature on counting, but have not succeeded.

A measurement is a function of creating a static unit.  In the statement like "I have five fingers",

the "finger" is a limb and the assumption is made that all such limbs are similar.

"five" in the sentence is a mathematical quantity where the limb is reduced to a unit.

I think the Jaina literature might have dealt with this in developing their theory of numbers.

I would like people to think the relevance of Jaina literature on the measurements,

particularly any text on counting and number theory.

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[Nagaraj Paturi]

The phrase 'cyclic time' is used by modern scholars. When such a usage happens, we try to understand in what sense they used that phrase. From all the usages, we see that the users of the phrase use the word 'time' metaphorically, to refer to the happenings in time, or the nature , state, status of those happenings in time. For example what are cyclically occurring are the seasons in a year. If year is the name given to the time of the length during which seasonal changes in nature are repeated , then to call year as ' cyclic time ' is metaphorical. It is used in the sense of time taken for a cyclic change in nature. 

Similarly, if  events  or nature of events is believed to be repeated in long durations such as centuries and millennia, such a view is given the name 'cyclic time'.

[Nithin Sridhar]

Dear Nagaraj ji, 

I had written this article on Srishti in Hinduism. This may be of some use- http://indiafacts.org/srishti-beyond-hindu-accounts-creation-evolution-non-origination/

Regards,

Nithin

[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

From The Temporal Dichotomy: ‘Linear’ vs ‘Cyclic’ Time (pp. 45-7) in Professor C.K. Raju's The Eleven pictures of Time (SAGE, 2003) :   

"Though motivated by a desire for a moral dichotomy—a sharp distinction between good and bad—the curse against ‘cyclic’ time had a strange longer-term consequence. It created a belief in a temporal dichotomy: a belief that there are exactly two conflicting pictures of time—‘linear’ time vs ‘cyclic’ time. ... Third, the categories are not well-defined, for pictures in the same category may be incompatible. To summarise, the categories of ‘linear’ and ‘cyclic’ time are spurious: forcibly packing many pictures of time into these two categories invites incoherence. Originating in medieval theology, this spurious categorisation has deeply infiltrated science, from the time of Newton." [p. 45-6]

Fig. 2: Types of 'linear' time in p. 47 (with illustrations of "MUNDANE TIME", "SUPERLINEAR TIME", "APOCALYPTIC TIME") might be of relevance. 

Best,

Megh

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[R. N. iyengar]

Dear Megh,

Your post makes lot of sense. As CK Raju rightly points out western intellectuals have created a belief in a temporal dichotomy. This has gone to the extent of declaring "Hindus lack sense of history due to their concept of Cyclic Time" . It would follow that good sense of history among westerners is because they believe that God created the world on a Thursday some 4000 and odd years before present, which is Linear Time!

This judeo-xtiian model has been mentally constructed backwards to Bigbang by scientists and to # PIE by linguists.

RNI

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[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

:-) 🙏

Dr. Raju's scholarship, particularly w.r.t Time, has helped me immensely.

Your inputs make sense to me. 

Best,

Megh

PS:  Had also tweeted the following a couple of months ago. 

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[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

The Physics and Philosophy of Time - with Carlo Rovelli

[rniyengar]

Dear Megh,

I found the following a good read (including Linear & Cyclic Time)

Does India Have History? Does History Have India? by THOMAS R. TRAUTMANN

Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 1 2;54( 1 ): 1 74-205.

Excerpts:

".... the main point for present purposes will be that Eliade's construct of the history-fleeing archaic man comes from the very civilizations that compiled lists of kings and recorded the deeds of past kings for the edification of contemporary ones, and scrutinized the skies to discover the future - that is, who wrote the first histories. Eliade's big idea just does not hold together.

"Between them, Hegel and the anti-Hegelian Eliade, among others, collaborate in promoting a strong contrast between cyclical and linear time-senses, attributing

the first to nature, or "archaic man," or the Indians, or the non-West, and the latter to the Greeks, to the Bible, to Europe, to modernity. I believe this is

wrong and leads us down false paths. There are two good reasons to believe a hard opposition of lineal and cyclical time is mistaken. One of them is that they are not true opposites. The second is that it wrongly takes the cyclical time of the Indian theory of world ages to be primordial."

RNI

On Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 8:50:22 PM UTC+5:30, Megh Kalyanasundaram wrote:

The Physics and Philosophy of Time - with Carlo Rovelli

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[Manogna Sastry]

Namaste,

As I see references to Carlo Rovelli's work on time and the larger considerations surrounding it, I wanted to draw attention to the work of two young Indians, one of them now the youngest to have completed his doctoral dissertation on the subject at Perimeter Institute, who have contributed significantly to the topic. They are Vasudev Shyam and Madhavan Venkatesh, both from Bangalore. They wrote the following papers in high school:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.5619

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2038276973_Vasudev_Shyam

Both of them have used presymplectic geometry to arrive at the significant result - there is fundamentally no time as a dimension, as used in fundamental physics and have corresponded extensively with Carlo Rovelli too on the same.

I thought I'd bring it to attention to show how two very young Indians have made fundamental contributions on this matter in the scientific community.

Warmly

Manogna

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[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

Thank you, Prof. Iyengar.

Best,

Megh

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[Megh Kalyanasundaram]

Wonderful! 

Megh

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