DrinkerOfSoma

"Uma-Maheshvara with attendants", Rajasthan, India (1850-1900)

"Obeisance to Shiva and his consort, God and Goddess of the universe, the overlords of the worlds, the embodiment of success. Obeisance forever to Shankara and Parvati, who are saluted by Indra and others."

“Bhasmasur Mohini”, by Raja Ravi Varma (date unknown, between 1894-1906)

In Puranic myth, it is said that the demonic figure Bhasmāsura was granted a boon by Mahādeva for his intense austerities. He had initially asked for immortality, but the god refused, so the asura requested for the power to incinerate anyone whose head he touches. Mahādeva, so easily pleased with his devotees as he is, granted him his wish, only to realize he had made a terrible mistake. For Bhasmāsura immediately attempted to set aflame the Lord's very own head! In response to this sudden betrayal, Śiva swiftly fled. He did not want to harm his own devotee, even given the circumstance of this situation.

"The Goddess Durga as Bhadrakali", Basohli School, Himachal Pradesh, India (c. 1675)

"Thus the supporter of the worlds was praised and worshipped with celestial flowers, perfumes, unguents and heavenly incense by the devas. Benignly serene in countenance she spoke to the obeisant gods. The Devi said, “O devas, choose whatever you desire of me”. The gods responded, “Since our enemy, this Mahishasura, has been slain by you, O Bhagavati everything has been accomplished, and nothing remains to be done. And if a boon is to be granted to us by you, O Maheshvari, whenever we think of you again, please destroy our direct calamities. And, O Mother of spotless countenance, whatever mortal shall praise you with these hymns, may you, who have become gracious towards us, also be gracious to him and bless him to be fortunate, O Ambika!” Goddess Bhadrakali who was thus propitiated by the gods for their own sake and that of the world, said “Be it so” and vanished from their sight."

“For religious man, nature is never only “natural”; it is always fraught with a religious value. This is easy to understand, for the cosmos is a divine creation; coming from the hands of the gods, the world is impregnated with sacredness. It is not simply a sacrality communicated by the gods, as is the case, for example, with a place or an object consecrated by the divine presence. The gods did more; they manifested the different modalities of the sacred in the very structure of the world and of cosmic phenomena. The world stands displayed in such a manner that, in contemplating it, religious man discovers the many modalities of the sacred, and hence of being. Above all, the world exists, it is there, and it has a structure; it is not a chaos but a cosmos, hence it presents itself as a creation as work of the gods. This divine work always preserves its quality of transparency, that is, it spontaneously reveals the many aspects of the sacred. The sky directly, “naturally.” reveals the infinite distance, the transcendence of the deity. The earth too is transparent ; it presents itself as universal mother and nurse. The cosmic rhythms manifest order, harmony, permanence, fecundity. The cosmos as a whole is an organism at once real, living, and sacred; it simultaneously reveals the modalities of being and of sacrality, Ontophany and hierophany meet.” 

"The Holy Family", Mughal School (c. 1820)

A tantric painting depicting the seven cakra within the body of Mahādeva.

"Sudama Brahmana is gloriously received by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krsna, and His eternal consort Srimati Rukmini."

Sri Ganesha, Rajasthan, India (1740)

ॐ गजाननं भूतगणादि सेवितं कपित्थ जम्बूफलसार भक्षितम् उमासुतं शोक विनाशकारणं नमामि विघ्नेश्वर पादपङ्कजम् ॥

Vishnu Vishvarupa, India; Rajasthan state, former kingdom of Jaipur (1800–1820)

"During the early vedic period the universe was viewed as consisting of three spheres (loka): the earth, the sky or firmament, and the space between these two, the intermediate region. The ancient Indians shared this tripartite cosmology with other Indo-European peoples. The phenomena associated with the sky and the intermediate region drew the attention of the early vedic poets in a special way: the rain clouds, lightning, thunder, wind, storm, and rain in the intermediate region, and the sun, moon, stars, and the brilliant vault of heaven in the sky.

This tripartite universe was controlled by personal powers, the gods. For the most part, these gods are associated with their natural counterparts, such as the sun, moon, storm, rivers, and fire. Often the Sanskrit names of the gods are identical to the names of the corresponding cosmic entity; thus, Surya is the Sun and Agni is the Fire. Sometimes the names vary, but the connection with the cosmic phenomena is unmistakable; thus Indra is connected with thunder and the releasing of waters; his weapon is the thunderbolt.

In the early vedic period the gods themselves are distributed among the three spheres: there are the gods of the earth, the gods of the intermediate region, and the gods of the sky. Although this distribution persists, the gods came to be generally located in the sky, the realm of light and immortality. The Sanskrit terms for these three spheres—bhur, bhuvas, svar—became sacred sounds, possibly because they contained the totality of the universe. Much Upanisadic speculation centers on the hidden meaning of these sounds.

In recent studies of vedic cosmology, Witzel (1984) and Brereton (1991) have drawn attention to the importance of the Milky Way and the stars around the polestar. Witzel has shown that the expression svarga loka (lit., 'bright world' commonly translated as 'heavenly world') refers specifically to the Milky Way. The door to this world is located at the mouth of the two arms extending toward the east from the Milky Way viewed during the winter months in northern India, which explains the importance of the east and the northeast in the ritual and in cosmological speculations. The Milky Way is also the bright ocean of heaven, the celestial waters; it is the source of the rivers that flow from the Himalayan mountains, thus connecting the earthly to the celestial waters.

By the late vedic period, however, we note the emergence of a new plan of the universe with seven spheres, positing three farther regions beyond the sky, called Mahas, Janas, and Tapas, and the farthest world named Satyaloka ('world of truth') or Brahmaloka ('world of Brahman'). Parallel to these seven upper or pleasant worlds, texts from a much later period posit seven descending and unpleasant worlds or hells, but the Upanisads show no sign of such a conception.

Another conception of the universe divides it into the world of humans, the world of ancestors or fathers, and the world of gods. Although less tied to observable reality, it is more significant for beliefs regarding the afterlife. The world of humans is, of course, the observable world in which our normal lives are lived. During the early period all humans, or at least those who had lived a ritually correct life, were believed to go to the world of fathers, but the Upanisads reveal a new perception of that world, according to which only those who are destined to return to and to be reborn in this world follow the path to the world of the fathers, while those destined not to return and to become immortal proceed to the world of the gods.

This new conception is tied to an emergent worldview centered on the doctrine of rebirth. The manner in which the rebirth process was thought to operate is similar to that in which Brahmanical thought viewed the operation of ritual actions. Rites achieve their results by their own autonomous power and according to a ritual law of cause and effect; ritual success does not depend on the will of a god. The moral law that governs the rebirth process operates in a similar manner; those who perform good actions are reborn in good situations, while those who do the opposite proceed to evil births. The correlation between the ritual and ethical spheres apparent in these early texts is made easier by the fact that the same Sanskrit term, karman (lit. 'action'), is used for both ritual and moral actions. The ethicization of cosmic processes evident in the Upanisads, moreover, remains a constant feature of later Indian cosmologies.

The early view of the mechanism of rebirth and of the escape from the rebirth cycle as depicted in the famous doctrine of five fires is tied to the old view of a tripartite and enclosed universe. The firmament, the vault of heaven, is viewed as a solid cover. After they are cremated, humans destined to be reborn go up to the moon in the form of smoke or vapor; from there they return to earth as rain, enter plants, and, when they are eaten by a man, become semen. They finally take on a new life in the womb of a woman. The universe is thus a prison with walls above (firmament) and below (earth). Those who possess the liberating knowledge, however, are able to break this cycle, to escape from this prison. The sun is viewed as a lid that covers the only opening in the vault of heaven, the only door to freedom; the sun permits the liberated individuals to pass through that opening and escape to the immortal condition outside the universe.

Another central concern of the Upanisadic thinkers relates to the "beginnings"; the expression "in the beginning" (agre) is frequent and opens the narrative of creation stories. The creator, the source from which creation emerged, most often is Prajapati, the principal creator god of the Brahmanas, who is identified with the sacrifice itself. The other two principles located at the "beginning" with some frequency are Brahman and Atman, which I will discuss below.

By the time of the later verse Upanisads, such as the Svetasvatara, new and more theoretical cosmologies had emerged, the most prominent of which is that associated with the Samkhya and Yoga traditions. Since these are some of the oldest documents reflecting Samkhya conceptions of the universe, the precise cosmology underlying them is unclear; that cosmology is certainly different from the classical accounts of Samkhya cosmology contained in scholastic works of later times. Like the latter, however, this early cosmology posits a material source, a primal matter, called prakrti or pradhana. This primal matter, originally unmanifest, contains three qualities or strands (guna): goodness (sattva), energy (rajas), and darkness (tamas).The visible and manifest universe has proceeded from the original primal matter; the three qualities are distributed in different proportions within the various constituents of the universe. Unlike classical Samkhya, however, this early cosmology posits a single and unique god who rules over the primal matter and regulates the production of the visible universe from it. Besides primal matter and god, there are the individual souls of humans, souls that are trapped within material bodies produced by primal matter. It is through the help of god that these souls can hope to be liberated from the material prison.

"The Swan, No. 1", Hilma af Klint (1915) I once found myself at a bizarre Kumbha Mēlā festival here in SoCal, where I chanced upon Rajiv Malhotra of all people. It is no secret that I vehemently disagree with him on a variety of topics, but I did not realize how much more ludicrous he would become in his crusade against Western academia with time. The main contention I’ve had with him is one regarding the perennial problem of the Indo-European migration into the Indian subcontinent (i.e., the veracity of the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT)). It is a topic I refuse to discuss today, as I have long tired of defending the Steppe Urheimat in the face of the unrelenting horde that propound the so-called Out of India Theory (OIT), but I digress. Malhotra's work was not all bad, his discussions of Indian philosophy are probably his only material worth looking into: "The Upanishads talk of both Nirguna Brahman (without attributes) and Saguna Brahman (with attributes). Shankara wanted to bring these into a single coherent framework. For this, he needed to solve the problem of the relationship between the world of karma, which is subject to causation, and the ultimate reality, which is untouched by causation.

Shankara achieved this reconciliation by following Gaudapada's idea of a two-level reality: (a) "paramarthika", absolute Reality or Brahman; and (b) "vyavaharika", empirical or conventional reality that is relative, i.e., the world as we ordinarily experience it.

However, this division creates another issue, because, according to such a division, the world is both real (sat) and unreal (asat)—an apparent self-contradiction. Advaiata Vedanta tries to resolve this by saying the world is different from both sat and asat; it is mithya, a third category, between real and unreal, which defies the laws of logical thinking (anirvacaniya)...

Advaita Vedanta's two-level theory is often compared to Nagarjuna's theory of two levels of truth: conventional and absolute. Many Vedantins accept that Gaudapada and Shankara were influenced by Nagarjuna, and that they took his theory and integrated it with the Upanishads as their non-dualist view. However, Nagarjuna's approach is radically negative (leading to 'emptiness' of substance) and based solely on logic, whereas Shankara's approach is positive (leading to purna, fullness) and anchored in sruti. Another principle they share is the doctrine of non-origination (ajativada), which says that nothing is born into existence or dies out of existence. Anything that is ultimately real was never born and never dies. Gaudapada uses this idea to argue that anything that has a point of origination must be mithya since whatever is sat (real) cannot change.

Vedanta interpreters use para (higher) and apara (lower) knowledge to correspond to these two levels of reality. In this framework, jnana (1) and conventional yoga corresponds to higher and lower knowledge, respectively. According to Shankara, yoga (2) enables one to attain the lower realm only. However, this is not useless or wrong, for it brings about a gradual process of advancement towards moksha (3). Shankara's jnana teachings on 'neti neti' and 'tat tvam asi' are for the attainment for the higher reality. (4)"

— Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net (2014)

Madhubāni Folk Art depicting the Daśa-Mahāvidyās and their associated yantras.

From left to right (top):

1. Kālī 2. Tārā 3. Ṣoḍaśī 4. Bhuvaneśvarī 5. Bhairavī

From left to right (bottom):

"Jatayu Vadham", Raja Ravi Varma (1895) 

"There was a roaming Vrātya. He roused Prajāpati to action. Prajāpati beheld gold in himself and engendered it. That became unique, that became distinguished, that became great, that became excellent, that became Devotion, that became holy Fervour, that became Truth: through that he was born. He grew, he became great, he became Mahādeva. He gained the lordship of the Gods. He became Lord. He became Chief Vrātya. He held a bow, even that Bow of Indra. His belly is dark-blue, his back is red. With dark-blue he envelops a detested rival, with red he pierces the man who hates him: so the theologians say."

"The God of Fire rose from the midst", Evelyn Paul (1912)