“Thoughts on Vedic Cosmography” (SB 3.21.42-47)
This selection of verses from the Srimad-Bhagavatam describes the Vedic sage Kardama Muni’s ashrama (living place), said to be located along the shores of Lake Bindu Sarovara, some 1.7 billion years ago. Naturally, an analysis based on contemporary paleontology would consider such an account mythological. While acknowledging these concerns, Thompson suggests that narrations of this nature can appear less incredulous by reconsidering uniformitarianism as an absolute principle.
TRANSCRIPT: Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 21, Text 42–47. “Thoughts on Vedic Cosmography.” San Diego – 1992 / (043)
[Texts 42-43]
Lake Bindu-sarovara was adorned by flowering trees such as kadamba, campaka, aśoka, karañja, bakula, āsana, kunda, mandāra, kuṭaja and young mango trees. The air was filled with the pleasing notes of kāraṇḍava ducks, plavas, swans, ospreys, waterfowl, cranes, cakravākas and cakoras.
[Purport]
For most of the trees, flowers, fruits and birds mentioned here as surrounding Bindu-sarovara Lake, English synonyms cannot be found. All the trees mentioned are very pious in that they produce a nice aromatic flower, such as the campaka, kadamba and bakula. The sweet sounds of waterfowl and cranes made the surrounding area as pleasant as possible and created a very suitable spiritual atmosphere.
So, I will read the next text also, which deals with the fauna.
[Text 44]
Its shores abounded with deer, boars, porcupines, gavayas, elephants, baboons, lions, monkeys, mongooses and musk deer.
Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:
Musk deer are not found in every forest, but only in places like Bindu-sarovara. They are always intoxicated by the aroma of musk secreted from their navels. Gavayas, the species of cow mentioned herein, bear a bunch of hair at the end of their tails. This bunch of hair is used in temple worship to fan the Deities. Gavayas are sometimes called camarīs, and they are considered very sacred. In India there are still gypsies or forest mercantile people who flourish by trading kastūrī, or musk, and the bunches of hair from the camarīs. These are always in great demand for the higher classes of Hindu population, and such business still goes on in large cities and villages in India.
Text 45 through 47:
Entering that most sacred spot with his daughter and going near the sage, the first monarch, Svāyambhuva Manu, saw the sage sitting in his hermitage, having just propitiated the sacred fire by pouring oblations into it. His body shone most brilliantly; though he had engaged in austere penance for a long time, he was not emaciated, for the Lord had cast His affectionate sidelong glance upon him and he had also heard the nectar flowing from the moonlike words of the Lord. The sage was tall, his eyes were large, like the petals of a lotus, and he had matted locks on his head. He was clad in rags. Svāyambhuva Manu approached and saw him to be somewhat soiled, like an unpolished gem.
Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:
Here are some descriptions of a brahmacārī-yogī. In the morning, the first duty of a brahmacārī seeking spiritual elevation is huta-hutāśana, to offer sacrificial oblations to the Supreme Lord. Those engaged in brahmacarya cannot sleep until seven or nine o’clock in the morning. They must rise early in the morning, at least one and a half hours before the sun rises, and offer oblations, or in this age, they must chant the holy name of the Lord, Hare Kṛṣṇa. As referred to by Lord Caitanya, kalau nāsty eva nāsty eva nāsty eva gatir anyathā: there is no other alternative, no other alternative, no other alternative, in this age, to chanting the holy name of the Lord. The brahmacārī must rise early in the morning and, after placing himself, should chant the holy name of the Lord. From the very features of the sage, it appeared that he had undergone great austerities; that is the sign of one observing brahmacarya, the vow of celibacy. If one lives otherwise, it will be manifest in the lust visible in his face and body. The word vidyotamānam indicates that the brahmacārī feature showed in his body. That is the certificate that one has undergone great austerity in yoga. A drunkard or smoker or sex-monger can never be eligible to practice yoga. Generally yogīs look very skinny because of their not being comfortably situated, but Kardama Muni was not emaciated, for he had seen the Supreme Personality of Godhead face to face. Here the word snigdhāpāṅgāvalokanāt means that he was fortunate enough to see the Supreme Lord face to face. He looked healthy because he had directly received the nectarean sound vibrations from the lotus lips of the Personality of Godhead. Similarly, one who hears the transcendental sound vibration of the holy name of the Lord, Hare Kṛṣṇa, also improves in health. We have actually seen that many brahmacārīs and gṛhasthas connected with the International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness have improved in health, and a luster has come to their faces. It is essential that a brahmacārī engaged in spiritual advancement look very healthy and lustrous. The comparison of the sage to an unpolished gem is very appropriate. Even if a gem just taken from a mine looks unpolished, the luster of the gem cannot be stopped. Similarly, although Kardama was not properly dressed and his body was not properly cleansed, his overall appearance was gemlike.
[5:52]
So, well... so we have Svāyambhuva Manu going to see Kardama Muni. One thing to comment regarding the previous two verses is that, this is one area in the Bhāgavatam that creates a problem for the modern scientific people, because it refers to all of these modern plants and animals surrounding Lake Bindu-sarovara. There aren't English translations for a lot of these trees and so forth, but they currently grow in India. So, in fact you can see them there. A lot of them are involved in Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes in Vṛindāvana, as a matter of fact.
And also, the animals are mammals of the modern type. So this event took place approximately 1.97 million... bill… yeah,1.97 billion years ago. You can calculate that on the basis of information given in the Bhāgavatam, namely that this occurred during the period of Svāyambhuva Manu. And 6 manvantara periods have fully elapsed, and we are in the... let's see... 27 yuga cycles of the 7th Svāyambhuva period have elapsed and we're in the Kali-yuga of the 28th yuga cycle. We're just about 5,000 years into that Kali-yuga. So based on that, you can calculate when the Svāyambhuva Manu period began, so that comes out to about 1.97 billion years because the length of one manvantara period is about 307 million years. So this occurred quite a long time ago, and according to modern scientific ideas, all these plants and animals weren't existing then. So that's a whole question, which one can look into. I'll just mention briefly that the modern scientific view of things is based on the principle of uniformitarianism. Now, that principle says that everything can be extrapolated on the basis of what we see. In other words, by seeing what things are like in our own vicinity and environment, we can understand what is true at a very great distance from us both in space and in time. So the idea of uniformitarianism... Actually the term was first created by geologists in England, actually, in the 19th century. In fact, it was people in England in the 19th century, who created this whole problem. They really worked hard, too. Drutakarma just handed me a book this thick about some of their endeavors.
So the idea of uniformitarianism is that everything in nature is going on according to the processes that we see today. So as... when it comes to explaining geological formations and so forth, these all can be explained in terms of the wind and the rain and so forth as we see it – flowing water, eroding rocks and so on. So on that basis they determine a picture of what was going on in the past. They extrapolate things backwards. So I just saw some interesting examples to which you could try to apply that. I was in Boulder, Colorado. So right next to the preaching center there you can see a mountain, which has slabs of rock, which were once horizontal because they’re sedimentary rock – they’re tilted at an angle like this. In fact, next to that there's another one where the rock is actually vertical, but it used to be completely horizontal. Now you might ask: How did that come about? So I suppose one idea is that a large number of tiny little earthquakes may have done it; with each one it just tilted it slightly, and then gradually got into that position.
[10:51]
Anyway, it was a... it's a curious geological formation. I also looked at it from the airplane on the way back here. And you could see that there's a very long ridge of earth in which the sediment has been completely tilted up like that. And it's unique. I looked carefully at the mountains across the whole rocky mountain range on the way back and that was the only instance I saw of anything that looked like that. All the other mountains are different in structure. But there for some reason the rock has been tilted up like this. So, one might ask how that happened? So the... basically this idea of extrapolation from what we can directly see is applied by the scientists. And they would have to somehow explain that – I’d be interested in hearing their explanation. Probably they don't have one. The thing that generally you do is just wave your hands and say that some general explanation applies.
So, here we have this description of Lake Bindu-sarovara, and it is different from what the scientists would say was there at that time. It is more different than one might think though. So one principle that can be considered when it comes to explaining the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is that things are more different from what we're accustomed to thinking than we would expect. In other words, the solution to the problems is not to, let us say, reduce the extraordinary nature of the claims that are made in the Bhāgavatam, but rather to fully confront the extraordinary claims that are being made there. So the Bhāgavatam is saying that this sage Kardama Muni was sitting by this Lake Bindu-sarovara. Now it's explained somewhere here that bindu-sarovara means that this lake was produced by the... or at least was affected by the tears of Lord Viṣṇu. Previously it's described that Kardama Muni was sitting by this lake meditating and he had been doing so for very many years. This was during the Satya-yuga, and people at that time used to live for 100,000 years. So that's, first of all, a point that's relevant to this question of extrapolation, because one wouldn't expect that people were living for 100,000 years. So, during that time, yogis could meditate for very long periods of time, without eating in fact. They would just sit in one place, control the life airs within the body, and engage entirely in meditation of different types. Some of them were impersonalists of course, but the actual standard for meditation was to meditate on the form of Lord Viṣṇu.
So, Kardama Muni was that type of yogi and after meditating for an extraordinarily long period of time, Lord Viṣṇu himself came before him. So there's a whole series of verses that we were reading previously in which that was described. So Lord Viṣṇu was very compassionate upon seeing Kardama Muni and so he actually cried upon seeing him, so some tears from his eyes fell into that lake. So, that's what the name of the lake actually means. I think bindu is a tear. Yeah, so bindu-sarovara, so that's the lake that Lord Viṣṇu’s tears fell into. Śrīla Prabhupāda said in some purport near here that this meant that Lake Bindu-sarovara was similar in potency to the Ganges, because in fact the Ganges comes from the feet of Lord Viṣṇu. So this is a similar thing. Now as it turns out, the river Sarasvatī… this lake was next to the river Sarasvatī, but the whole river has vanished, as I mentioned in the previous class that I gave. So, all kinds of changes take place over time.
[15:39]
So, at this time, Kardama Muni was sitting there meditating, but he is directly a son of Brahmā. Also, this Svāyambhuva Manu is directly a son of Brahmā. And Svāyambhuva Manu was residing in the city of Bahiṣmatī in Brahmāvarta. I mentioned in a previous class that there is some controversy that Śrīla Prabhupāda mentions regarding where Brahmāvarta was situated. So some were saying that Brahmāvarta is on the earth and it would be in the region between the Ganges and the Yamunā River, that's where Brahmāvarta would be located. And others were saying that it's a place in Brahmaloka. So, I was mentioning that there are all kinds of connections between celestial places and earthly places according to the Bhāgavatam. So Svāyambhuva Manu was residing on the earth, but the earth that he was presiding over was more than just the earth that we know of. Also, specifically later on, his sons and grandsons became kings of various regions in Bhu-mandala. In particular, one son of Svāyambhuva Manu was King Priyavrata. The story of Priyavrata is that he had renounced material life entirely and had become a disciple of Nārada Muni. So he was practicing brahmācārya and was meditating out in the Gandhamādana Mountain, I believe it was, that is located in Jambūdvīpa, in a certain location.
So, Svāyambhuva Manu wanted to retire from his position of ruling the earth. And so it was appropriate for his son Priyavrata to take over that position, but his... Priyavrata didn't want to do so. So finally Brahmā himself had to come down and speak to Nārada Muni and Priyavrata and convince them that Priyavrata should give up his spiritual practices at least temporarily and take up the position of king. So Priyavrata of course agreed to do that, being asked by Brahmā himself, who is his grandfather actually. So he became the king and he ruled for 11 arbudas of years. So an arbuda is, I believe, a hundred million years. So that means that Priyavrata ruled for 1.1 billion years, which is even longer than the period of a Manu. And apparently he was ruling a good part of the universe. Srila Prabhupāda said that it wasn't clear exactly where he was situated. So this was a son of Svāyambhuva Manu who was... had his capital in Brahmāvarta on the earth.
So, I’m bringing this up to make this point concerning uniformitarianism and extrapolation. Evidently things were quite different then from the way they are now. So also the... even the sequence of historical events as described in the Bhāgavatam was following a somewhat different pattern at that time, because this Priyavrata was ruling for a period of several manvantaras actually. So as it turns out, after that period of time, Priyavrata, Mahārāja Priyavrata, became slightly attached to his wife. Now consider that. It took him 1.1 billion years to become slightly attached to his wife. So.... and when he realized that this was happening, he then renounced material life again and took up his original spiritual activities. So it seems he was a little bit steady in his determination. Also Mahārāja Priyavrata, there are other interesting things about him. He created the seven oceans and hence the seven islands that are described in the description of Bhū-maṇḍala. So, he did this on one occasion where he decided to create a second sun in order to provide pleasing conditions for the people. So, what he did was ride in his chariot, which was very effulgent, 180 degrees opposite to where the sun was located. And thus when the sun was up during the day, of course he wouldn't have been visible. But as soon as the sun set, Priyavrata’s chariot would appear, and formed a second second sun, so there was no night, during this period of time.
[21:27]
So, let's see, this is relevant to the whole question of understanding what the earth is in the Bhāgavatam, because he was traveling out in space, but he was also traveling on the earth. And he went around Bhū-maṇḍala seven times, and with the wheels of his chariot he created seven circular tracks which became the seven oceans. So, and that... anyway that formed the seven islands, Sapta-dvīpa. So it's significant that he went around seven times, because it's described that during... let's see, “his sun created seasons opposite to the seasons of the regular sun” so that “during the summer period, his sun created mild and pleasing conditions and during the winter period, his sun created considerable warmth.” That's described in the Bhāgavatam. So, if you put these different elements together, you can see that when it said that he went around seven times that means seven years. So, Mahārāja Priyavrata was creating the second sun for a period of seven years, which tells you that the place where he was orbiting corresponds to the ecliptic or the plane of the sun's orbit. And that's part of the whole process you can follow for understanding where Bhū-maṇḍala is as described in the Fifth Canto of the Bhāgavatam.
So, that is part of the general framework. The point that I was making, then – that is the general point – is that if you look at the descriptions in the Bhāgavatam from the point of view of modern day received opinion, based on science and so forth, and you try to make a small adjustment in order to accommodate what is being described there, that won't work. But you can see if you look at the big picture how everything fits together. So, this description I was giving about Svāyambhuva Manu and Priyavrata is part of the big picture. Things were quite a bit different, during this historical period than we see now. And one main feature of the... of that period is that these beings were present on the earth, who are completely superhuman. So this Kardama Muni, also as I mentioned, was the son of Brahmā. Svāyambhuva Manu came to see him. Kardama muni had been asked by Brahmā to create population within the universe. So another feature of the universe is that in the early stages of the creation there seemed to be difficulties in creating sufficient population. We don't seem to have that problem right at the moment. But in any case, Brahmā had ordered Kardama Muni to generate population. So Kardama Muni realized that that was his duty. So when Lord Viṣṇu appeared before him, Kardama Muni asked Lord Viṣṇu to provide a wife for him. So Svāyambhuva Manu, as it turned out, had a very eligible daughter, named Devahūti. So he came to see Kardama Muni and arranged for Kardama Muni to marry his daughter. So, that was what was happening here.
[25:18]
Now, here there’s a description of... in this purport that I read today, of Kardama Muni. So he had been practicing penances for a very long period of time, but he was in a state of good health. Specifically this was due to the fact that the Lord Viṣṇu had glanced upon him. So, see... what time it is here? So that is very significant. Let's see, any particular point to make here? Are there any questions or comments. Yeah?
Question: [unclear]
Answer: Right. Brahmā is there. Yeah, we can't see them. That's another aspect of this whole thing, that I could mention. Right now, Manu is not... does not have his capital in India between the Yamunā and the Ganges. Now the Fifth Canto says where he does have his capital. Now which varṣa is it... one of the varṣas of Jambūdvīpa. Now I forget which one. But anyway Manu is reigning from there. Things were different then in the sense that Manu was directly present in India, but it's the fact all of these things are going on. So, there is a manu, namely Vaivasvata Manu right now.