Chapter 92: Connecting the three

After telling Jia the last of the mythology Xin asked, "Can you find any correlation between them? Or any similarity?"

Jia had already this correlation and similarity. And was just waiting for the mysterious voice to ask her.

She replied with a victory winning smile on her face, "Yes, I have found the correlation between them."

According to Jia there were many similarities between these mythologies. The first common thing between them was the presence of a Saviour.

In the Christian mythology it was Noah, in the Indian mythology it was King Manu and in the other mythologies it was someone else. Not only that she even pointed out something from the Creation mythology. In every mythology one way or other some god or some giant creates the humans from mud or clay. And this was the second similarity across all the mythologies.

Xin smirked in the real world and transmitted his dignified voice, "Then which one do you think is the true mythology? The Christian one, the Indian one, the Chinese one or the Norse one?"

"Hmm…." This question put her in some confusion. Finding similarity was a different thing. But to figure out and deduce which one is the real one was a task completely above her level.

After remaining silent for sometimes she finally replied, "I- don't know!"

"Hahaha," Xin laughed at her reply and added, "Well I was expecting this. Let me narrow down the options for you."

Xin was about to start when he felt the inner dimension was slowly closing down. He realized that it was his fault for taking so much time in mythologies and stuff.

Though it was partly his fault he didn't give it much thought and transferred some of his magiculus energy into her inner dimension. The intention was to use this energy to stop the closing of her dimension for the time being and give her more time for her vessel construction.

Now if it were any normal people he/she would have faced some problem in doing so. But the person in talk here was Xin. The MC of the novel who somehow joined his Dimensional Pocket with his Magiculus Vessel making it a Dimensional Vessel with infinite storing capacity.

Jia was unaware of all these and was waiting for the mysterious voice to eliminate some mythologies from the options.

After stopping the closing of her inner dimension Xin spoke again and said, "So, I am narrowing it down to three mythologies. First is Indian, second is Christian and the third is Chinese."

"Mhm…" Jia nodded and started to remember the points that they have discussed earlier. 

First on line was the India one. According to which universe is millions of years old. In line with the Hindu belief in reincarnation, the universe we live in is not the first or indeed the last universe.

Indian religion and mythology are closely interwoven and cannot really be separated. Moreover, both are so vast and confused that any generalization is likely to oversimplify. The earliest Indian texts are the Vedas, a series of sacred hymns in honor of the Aryan gods, who personified natural forces such as the sun, storm, fire, soma, and the like. The Vedic religion was materialistic, devoted to obtaining power, prosperity, health, and other blessings by means of ritual and sacrifice.

By the time of Buddha around 500 B.C., the old Vedic religion had been transformed by Brahmin priests into a fantastical hodgepodge, with the priests claiming godlike powers for themselves. Buddha addressed himself to the problem of human suffering and discovered a way to eliminate it through disciplined living and giving up one's desires. He gained so many followers that the Brahmins were forced to incorporate his ideas into their teachings. The result was Hinduism, a modified polytheism with three major gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.

For Hindus the universe was created by Brahma, the creator who made the universe out of himself.

After Brahma created the world, it is the power of Vishnu which preserves the world and human beings.

As part of the cycle of birth, life and death it is Shiva who will ultimately destroy the universe. This is not necessarily as bad as it might sound because it allows Brahma to start the process of creation all over again.

Examples of how the origins of the universe are explained in Hinduism include:

A lotus flower grew from Lord Vishnu's navel with Brahma sitting on it. Brahma separated the flower into three parts - the heavens, the Earth and the sky.

Out of loneliness, Brahma split himself into two to create a male and a female. From this male and female all beings were created.

Another story makes reference to life coming from the cracking of an enormous egg, which is the life from which the universe is born.

The Hymn of Creation from the Rig Veda concludes that nobody knows how the universe came into being and even questions whether Brahman knows.

Some Hindu texts offer a more scientific explanation based on the evolution of primary elements from a single source.

These accounts, and others, were written many centuries ago in or around what we now know as India. They were not necessarily intended to be taken as literal scientific truth, but are indicators of the complexity and infinite nature of the universe.

Many Hindus understand religious teachings about the universe.

After hearing all these Jia was getting excited to know more about it. Never in her life had she felt such irresistible urge to know about a topic as she was getting now. 

Xin observed the expression of her face and dived deeper into his analogy. 

From the Vedic 'splitting of the golden egg' to create heaven and earth to Arunachal Pradesh's Donyi-Polo (Sun-Moon) and Sedi, which talks about how the world was made, such 'creation myths' are universal and diverse across states, countries, indigenous communities, and even religions such as Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

In the Rig Veda, there is a passage, 'If in the beginning there was neither Being nor Non-Being, neither air nor sky, what was there? Who or what oversaw it?

What was it when there was no darkness, light, life or death? We can only say that there was the One, that which breathed of itself deep in the void, that which was heat and became desire and the germ of spirit.' Such speculative reflections on the beginning of the universe, life, and consciousness are essences the creation myths around the world are made up of. Creation myths are as universal as our need to know where we came from, how things originated and they cater to our need to locate ourselves in cultural identity and significance. The historian of religion Mircea Eliade calls creation myth, 'the narration of sacred history', the storytelling process by which chaos becomes cosmos.

The Hiranyagarbha (literal translation, 'golden egg') Sukta of the Rig Veda declares that Brahman, the Soul of the Universe, manifested as a golden egg encompassing everything and floating around in emptiness and darkness before splitting into two halves, Svarga (paradise) and Prithvi (earth). The exciting aspect of the Hiranyagarbha Sukta and the Upanishad is that the creation myth is carried on to other mythologies such as Bhagavata Purana and the Ithihasas (epics) such as Ramayana and Mahabharata. Hiranyagarbha is also a sacrificial ritual (yagna) in Vedic religion.

She also remembered the point taught to her by Xin. The texts Matsya Purana and Shatapatha Brahmana Manu was a minister to the king of pre-ancient Dravida. He was washing his hands in a river when a little fish swam into his hands and begged him to save its life. He put the fish in a jar, which it soon outgrew. He successively moved it to a tank, a river and then the ocean. The fish then warned him that a deluge would occur in a week that would destroy all life. It turned out that fish was none other than Matsya (Fish in Sanskrit) the first Avatara of Vishnu.

Manu therefore built a boat which Matsya towed to a mountaintop when the flood came, and thus he survived along with some "seeds of life" to re-establish life on earth.

Now she joined this last part of Hindu mythology with that of Christian where God beheld the corruption of the earth and determined to destroy it, he gave Noah divine warning of the impending disaster and made a covenant with him, promising to save him and his family. Noah was instructed to build an ark, and in accordance with God's instructions he took into the ark male and female specimens of all the world's species of animals, from which the stocks might be replenished. Consequently, according to this narrative, the entire surviving human race descended from Noah's three sons and their wives.

God also renewed his commands given at Creation but with two changes: humankind could now kill animals and eat meat, and murder would be punished by humans. Despite the tangible similarities of the Mesopotamian mythologies and the biblical Flood, the biblical story has a unique Hebraic perspective.

In the Babylonian stories the destruction of the flood was the result of a disagreement among the gods, while in Genesis it resulted from the moral corruption of human history. The primitive polytheism of the Mesopotamian versions is transformed in the biblical story into an affirmation of the omnipotence and benevolence of the one righteous God.

And at last she connected this part to the Chinese Mythology where the two siblings entered inside a gourd and saved their life from the great flood.

Xin commended, "good!"