Logo

Synopsis It deals comprehensively with the history of Indian cosmogonical ideas, tracing the pattern of progress from crude unconnected notions to more refined ideas and broader views and demonstrating the process of the steady but multifarious advance from a concrete physical principles to the abstract, ritualistic, theistic, atheistic and psychological first principles, regarded by different thinkers at different times as the cause of the world. Without an adequate idea of Indian cosmogonical speculations, the knowledge of traditional Indian wisdom remains naturally incomplete, and hence, in order to explain the viewpoints of different schools of thought, each facing the cosmogonical problems in its own way, the author resorts to the method of textual documentation, and the results thus produced from a careful and critical analysis of the relevant passages are given in the concluding chapter. An appendix has also been added which is a summary of views expressed by eminent scholars regarding the cosmogonical ideas prevailing among different peoples outside India so that readers may develop a comparative outlook.