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102
RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
The mundane egg, the form in which, according to Manu *, the rudiments of the world are first manifested, was not imknown, as you are well aware, to the ancient cosmogonies of Greece.
In whatever inode movement is imparted to the first inert principle of things, the stages by which it evolves into the actual variety of perceptible forms are much the same in the different systems; the first product is intelligence; thence proceeds egotism, or the consciousness of individuality; thence come the senses; thence the rudiments of the objects of sense or the subtle elements, and from them the gross or perceptible elements ether, air, fire, water, carth are developed, and they are the compound ingredients of all visible and tangible form. A more particular detail may be found in the Sankhya Kárika and Vishnu Purána **.
The elements of forms thus developed from primary matter remain unaltered for a day of Brahma : a tolerably long interval, 2,160,000,000 years. At the end of this period, Brahmá sleeps. The material forms which then occupy the world, and the lower spheres of the universe, are then consumed by fire; the fire is extinguished by mighty rains, and the globe becomes a shoreless ocean. The sages, the gods, the elements survive, and when Brahma wakes and finds what mischief his slumbers have generated, he sets to work to repair it. With the materials ready to his
* [I, 9. Vishńu Pur. p. 18. A. H. A. Kellgren, Mythus de ovo mundano. Helsingfors.: 1849, p. 9 ff. Weber, Ind. Stud., II, 382.]
** [S. K. 22 ff. V. P. p. 14 ff.]
