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The two great Indian epics, the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, were probably composed between 200 bce and 200 ce. Both of these narratives act as a kind of bridge between the worlds of the Vedas and the Upaniṣads and that of classical, Purāṇic Hinduism.
This same period saw the development of the early Śāstras or legal texts, which also contain cosmological information. The cosmology of the epics and the early Śāstras incorporates an increasing systematization of the idea of samsaric time for the individual and expands the idea of the universe into one that dissolves and regenerates.
This same period saw the development of the early Śāstras or legal texts, which also contain cosmological information. The cosmology of the epics and the early Śāstras incorporates an increasing systematization of the idea of samsaric time for the individual and expands the idea of the universe into one that dissolves and regenerates.
- Epic cosmology also incorporates the ideas of Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophy, such as the "qualities," or guṇa s, that are inherent in all beings and elements in the universe.
- Such a cosmology involves an entirely new pantheon of gods, the triad of Viṣṇu, Śiva, and Brahmā, and the Devī, or goddess.
- These gods were probably part of the popular religious worlds of North India, even during the period of Vedic sacrificial practice.
- However, as sacrificial practice waned and the patronage of temples increased, these gods emerged as the larger, cosmological deities in their own right.
- Devotion (bhakti) toward these deities is also an emerging theme in the epics, in which the deity is seen as the creator and sustainer of the universe.
- The body of the deity is the frame of the cosmos, and time (also an agent of the deity) moves beings toward their final state.
- At the basis of these ideas is an early Hindu philosophy called Sāṃkhya, which means "counting." In the sense that its aim is to enumerate everything in the universe, it could also be called a cosmology.
- According to Sāṃkhya, the universe evolves from a feminine "natural matter" and becomes entangled with the masculine puruṣa, which is an individual soul (and not to be confused with the earlier "cosmic person").
- Thus in these entanglements twenty-four "evolutes" emerge, including the senses and the elements.
- Sāṃkhya is the basis of the practice of Yoga, whereby the yogin gradually extricates the soul from the evolutes of prakṛti.
- After eight stages, the soul realizes its eternal nature and is no longer subject to the laws of action (karma) or transmigration (saṃsāra).
- Time, however, is not an agent in itself. Sāṃkhya's ordering of the universe of prakṛti is generally not hierarchical, although one text—the Yoga Bhāṣya —sees the lower evolutes of prakṛti as the hells and the higher ones as the heavens.
- The extrication of the soul from prakṛti in the practice of Yoga is seen as the soul's movement toward the higher realms, and when it leaves the world altogether, it also dissolves it.
- On a smaller cosmological scale, Sāṃkhya Yoga philosophy contributes the basic idea that there are universal qualities or "guṇas" inherent in every element on earth.
- These guṇas are sattva (truth, light); rajas (passion, force) and tamas (weight, darkness) are inherent in every particle of the universe.