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- Hindu tradition possesses one of the richest and most continually evolving cosmologies in the global culture.
- From the most ancient Indian religious compositions, the Vedas, to contemporary twenty-first-century Indian theories combining science and religion, time and space have been lavishly narrated and meticulously calculated.
- Moreover moral, social, and philosophical meanings underlie these cosmologies in compelling ways.
- This article will focus on six major frames for Hindu cosmology:
- the Vedic,
- Upaniṣadic,
- epic,
- Purāṇic,
- non-Sanskritic, and
- contemporary scientific-philosophical.
- Although through the millennia Hindu thinkers have dramatically redrawn notions of time, space, and person, they also share a wealth of common imagery:
- the reciprocal effects between natural and human affairs,
- the central idea of a cycle, and
- the divisions of space into particular realms and spheres.
- Each new cosmology does not completely replace the old but stands alongside of it as yet another cosmological option.