Arnez 1

Arnold Arnez
Professor Adluri
Philo 221
September 27​th​, 2019
Test #1

(1) What is the Rig Veda? How is "creation" presented in the "Creation hymn"? How
is it structure, what are its functions? How does it establish Brahman, or being?

The ​Rig Veda​ is one of a set of four holy texts that found the Hindu religion and Indian

philosophy. This text specifically contains the “Creation hymn” and the “Sacrifice Hymn,”

which are two texts which seek to explain the structure of reality. The Rig Veda, like all of the

Vedas, are not seen as having an author or a set of authors because it is seen as having come

about through divine revelation to reveal the structure of reality. The Rig Veda is not written in

the form of a scientific treatise as is common in philosophical texts now. Rather, it is written in

poetic verse, detailing the mythic-religious rites and rituals while having the philosophical ideas

embedded within the verse and the problems posed within in them.

Creation in the Rig Veda is developed as being paradoxical in nature, as it does not make

the simple dualistic distinctions between Being and Non-Being. In Western Philosophy, Being is

seen as encompassing the whole of reality and, thus, can be philosophized about. Non-Being,

according to Parmenides, ought not even be thought about because it does not exist and, thus,

will only lead us astray from Truth which resides in Being.

For the Rig Veda, the hymn describes rather that we ought to consider Non-Being as

having philosophical worth. To think of Non-Being as anything other than things which do not

and cannot exist, or as things which exist, would be incorrect. But, to think about Non-Being is

to focus on the process of thinking about Non-Being and not what could actually be Non-Being.
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To think of Being and Non-Being, one is made to see that one’s thinking, one’s own rationality,

can conceive of the beginning of Creation while all that is material cannot move back to that first

cause. By removing the material world as we conceive it through the senses, one can see that in

this thinking of what preceded Being and Non-Being, it gives rise to the fourth verse where

desire “came upon that one in the beginning; that was the first seed of mind” (10.129: 4). By

seeking to parse out Being, Non-Being, and what proceeds prior to the two, the hymn has one

focus on thinking as the first cause of reality itself.

The God, Brahman, comes about from this reasoning because Brahman itself is defined

as “the one” or the whole of reality itself. In Indian thought, the world is actually ontologically

monistic, that all things are Brahman and nothing can nor does exist outside of Brahman. The

key quality of Brahman is that He is both all of reality and thinking itself. The beginning of the

Creation Hymn places one’s focus on thought as the first seed of creation and how out of that

which precedes Being and Non-Being comes about reality which Brahman has parsed out.

(2) Compare the Creation Hymn to "Sacrifice" hymn. How does Sacrifice serve to
explain creation? What ultimately is the connection between the model of
"sacrifice" and "causality?”

The “Sacrifice Hymn” describes the sacrifice of the cosmic being, Purusa, and how all of

reality is constructed from him giving up his body and having himself separated into different

pieces. In the work ​Primal Myths,​ Barbara Sproul defines sacrifice through its etymological roots

of “​sacre”​ (holy) and “​facere”​ (to make), to conclude that “sacrifice” means “to make holy”

(Sproul 1978, 22). The ritual process of sacrifice is one of seeing the offering being sacrificed as

worthy to represent a transaction of humans for the deity who holds a power in reality necessary

for human survival.

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Purusa is seen as a cosmically large being whose arm span ranges the length of the

universe and the sacrifice that is done on his body creates the whole universe. Each part of the

body constitutes different aspects of reality, including humans who constitute the fourth of

Purusa’s body that created the material universe. From his melted fat came the animals of the

Earth, from his eyes the sun are born, the sky was born from his ears, and even humans and their

religious hierarchies were born. The caste system is founded from this sacrifice where the

“mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Warrior, his thighs the People, and

from his feet the servants were born” (10.90:12). The act of sacrifice is used as a way to divide

all that is in reality and that these essential divisions are holy and necessary to reality.

The sacrifice of the body to create the world in its order gives an allegory for the process

of transaction within cause and effect. To give one thing up, for it to die, becomes a catalyst for

other things to grow. This is parallel to the way in which a tree grows from fertile soil, but that

soil is only fertile because it has nutrients from the varied dead animals and plants which are

buried and decayed underneath. In this same fashion, Purusa gives of his own life so the universe

can grow, and from different parts of his body, as with different soil, grow different aspects of

reality.

The story of Purusa differs from that of Brahman in the Creation hymn, because the latter

describes a reality that preceded being and non-being, while the former commences reality with

the visceral act of dismemberment. The visceral description shows the great cost it takes for their

to be existence within the first place, while the nebulousness of the Creation hymn is shrouded in

the mystery of a reality that even “the highest in heaven … perhaps he does not know” (10.129:

7). Purusa’s sacrifice places the world into an order that is understood through the world around
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them, from the social hierarchy with the brahmin, to the use of ghee in ritual, to the elements and

animals of daily life, like wind and sheep.

However, within both narratives, contradiction is used to display key metaphysical truths.

The Creation myth opens with the contradiction of there being neither “non-existence nor

existence” (10.29: 1) to bring about the law of non-contradiction, whereby in seeking to define

being and non-being, the answers would show their opposing nature on an ontological level. As

for the Purusa myth, the sacrifice is made from Purusa to himself by the gods (10.90: 16),

displaying the sacrality of the transactional logic of sacrifice itself. By focusing on Purusa

sacrificing to himself, the focus is neither that he is doing it nor that he is a worthy object, rather

it is pointing the act of sacrifice. Where the sacrifice would be important to the gods because the

livestock or crops are of good quality for the gods, the act of sacrifice itself is important because

it establishes the ontological reality of a cause, death, bringing about the fertile soil by which life

can exist, life. Having separated itself from its wholeness, what is holy is that which can

encompass the world in its entirety, which would return to Brahman, the ground of existence,

itself.