All Great Rivers Converge in the Oceans

How was this universe formed? Or put it differently, How did God create human beings on the earth?

Time and again, I used to ponder over this topic, and nothing unusual crossed my thoughts until my recent visit to my Pune home. As always, this time too, I began glancing through the books stacked in various places gathering dust; But, this time, I picked up a few of them for reading as a time pass.

One of them was Prashna Upanishad.  This book, with all the verses in Sanskrit with transliteration in English, set my thoughts running. My command over Sanskrit language  is limited to merely reading the verses at sleepy pace with all the concomitant mispronunciations. But, I was determined to go through it at least once. It was almost like a journey going back to my roots, as  I finished reading this book.

Knowledge is never anything but sharing and so it humbles me in partaking my thoughts on the very first intriguing question of this great Prashna Upanishad, on the origin of human beings.  I had earlier read a number of stories from the Bible, the Quran and other Greek mythologies. Intense and interesting as they were, I decided to put my thoughts  together on  the knowledge I had gathered from these sources, alongside the version from the Upanishad.    I am just a conduit in sharing the thoughts as found in various literature on the subject. And I own full responsibility for any (mis)interpretations made in dealing with this serious topic.

Prashna Upanishad says:

The teachings in this Upanishad are based on a series of six questions posed 

by six disciples viz., Kabandhi, Sukesa, Satyakama, Sauryayani, Kausalya, and 

Bhargava and answered by the Great Sage and Teacher Pippaláda. The first question posed by Kabandhi was, “Where do all the human beings come from?”

Adi Shankara was one of the earliest to give a commentary on the Upanishads and his was also considered to be one of the best too. According to his commentary, the Sage replied that the Supreme God with deep thought of creating creatures out of himself practiced austerities.  Having thus brooded over the knowledge, imparted by the srutis produced a pair, a couple—necessary for creation —the moon, i.e., food and prâna, fire,  the sun, i.e., the eater. Thinking that agni (sun) and the moon, i e., (the eater and the food) respectively would create diverse creatures, he created the sun and the moon, in the order beginning with anda (globe). Thus, the first human beings were born out of the Sun and Moon. The verse is as follows:

तस्मै स होवाच प्रजाकामो वै प्रजापतिः स तपोऽतप्यत स तपस्तप्त्वा स मिथुनमुत्पादयते । रयिं च प्रणं चेत्येतौ मे बहुधा प्रजाः करिष्यत इति ॥ ४ ॥

tasmai sa hovāca prajākāmo vai prajāpatiḥ sa tapo'tapyata sa tapastaptvā sa mithunamutpādayate | rayiṃ ca praṇaṃ cetyetau me bahudhā prajāḥ kariṣyata iti || 4 ||

Greek Mythological Story:

The book ‘Tales of the Greek Heroes’  by Rogers Lancelyn Green  is  considered 
as one of the well researched  works on Greek Heroes (for original version, read 
Homer’s Illiad).  The Greek  Immortal  Zeus was the presiding deity of the 
Universe and the God of the skies and the ruler of Olympian Gods.  In order to 
mark his stamp of authority, he waged wars  against  Titans (something similar to 
the war between  Rama and Ravana).  After the war was won by the Olympians, 
Zeus punished Titans and sent   them  to Tartarus, a sort of hell under the sea. 
Prometheus,  though one of the Titans, sided with Zeus and escaped the 
punishment  (Similar to Vibhishana who shifted to Rama’s camp).  Comparison 
with Ramayana stops here.  Prometheus and  his brother  Epimetheus  
considered privileged immortals  were given the task of creating man.  
Prometheus  shaped the first human being, a man out of  clay.  Athena, goddess 
of  intelligence, reason, literature and arts and the  daughter  of Zeus  breathed 
life  into his clay figure. Story goes further that Prometheus gave extraordinary 
powers of using fire by humans which enraged Zeus and wanted to punish them 
more severely. 

Bible Story goes:

The story of Adam and Eve is known to most of us. This story was central to the belief that God created human beings to live in a paradise on earth, although they fell away from that state and became part of  the present world full of suffering and injustice. 

According to various versions of Bible, God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.…

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” [Genesis: 1:26 New American Standard Bible]

Then, God fashioned  Adam from dust and placed him in the Garden of Eden.   Adam was told that he would  till the ground and eat freely of all the trees in the garden, except from  a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Subsequently, Eve was created from one of Adam's ribs to be Adam's companion.  In the beginning, they were innocent and unashamed about their nakedness. However, a serpent deceived  Eve into eating fruit from the forbidden tree, and she gave some of the fruit to Adam. These acts gave them additional knowledge, but it gave them the ability to conjure negative and destructive concepts such as shame and evil.  Then he banished them from the Garden of Eden.

Quron says :

Pertinent âyat-i karîmas (Qur’anic verses) purport as follows:
(When your Lord said, “I will create a caliph on earth, (Sûrat-ul-Baqara 30-33).

 “Verily We created man from a product of wet earth; then placed him as a drop (of seed) in a safe lodging; then We fashioned the drop into a clot, then We fashioned the clot into a little lump, then We fashioned the little lump into bones, then clothed the bones with flesh, and then produced it another creation. So blessed be Allah, the Best of Creators!” [23:12-14]

Islam provides us with greater details of the creation of Adam (AAdham) the first human being.  In describing the creation of the first human being both Christian and Jewish traditions are remarkably similar yet importantly different to the Quran.  The Book of Genesis described Adam as being made from “the dust of the earth,” and in the Talmud, Adam was described as being kneaded from mud.

In Quran, God said, to the Angels:

“And (remember) when your Lord said to the angels: ‘I am going to create a human (Adam) from sounding clay of altered black smooth mud.  So when I have fashioned him and breathed into him (his) soul created by Me, then you fall down prostrate to him.” (Quran 38:71-72)

Throughout the Quran, the soil used to create the man was referred to by many names, and from this one can understand some of the methodologies of his creation.  The first human being was moulded from something akin to potter’s clay.  When it was rapped it produced a ringing sound.

All Rivers Converge in the Great Oceans:

Thus began  the story of the first human being.  In Hindu Upanishads, the Supreme God created the first human being from the Fire (the Sun) and the Food (the Moon). The Greek Mythology, Chiristianity and the Muslim  texts  have all observed uniformly  that the first human being was created out of ‘mud’ or ‘clay’. 

As all the great rivers converge in the oceans, one common thread among all the versions on creation of the first human being was the unassailable belief all the religions had in accepting presence of a Supreme being viz., God who only created the first human being.  And is this non-dualism! Let us bow to Him with all our reverence.