“Long before telescopes peered into the void, sages sat under banyan trees, meditating on the birth of everything.”
Modern science and astronomy tell us that the universe began around 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang—a moment when space, time, and all matter burst forth from an unimaginably dense point. But what if Hinduism had already intuited this cosmic truth?
In Hindu cosmology, creation is not a one-time event but a cyclical process—an eternal dance of birth, death, and rebirth. Fascinatingly, some of Hinduism’s oldest texts describe the origin of the cosmos in ways that echo modern cosmological ideas. Was the Big Bang really a “new” discovery—or a rediscovery of something the ancients already knew?
The Big Bang theory, first formulated in the 1920s and later supported by cosmic background radiation evidence, proposes that the universe began from a singularity—a point of infinite density and temperature. From that singularity, all space and matter expanded outward, forming stars, galaxies, and everything we know.
Hindu Cosmology: Creation Without Beginning
Hinduism doesn’t describe creation in a single, linear timeline. Instead, it offers a cyclical model of the universe, with endless cycles of creation (Srishti), preservation (Sthiti), and dissolution (Pralaya).
One of the oldest references comes from the Rig Veda (~1500 BCE), which offers a poetic and philosophical reflection on creation in the famous Nasadiya Sukta:
“Then even nothingness was not, nor existence… There was neither death nor immortality… But, after all, who knows, and who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened?”
(Rig Veda 10.129)
This open-ended, even skeptical view of creation aligns in spirit with the questions modern physicists still ask about the singularity before the Big Bang.
One of Hinduism’s most profound metaphors for creation is the Hiranyagarbha, or the “Golden Womb” or “Cosmic Egg,” found in the Upanishads and Puranas.
According to this concept, the entire universe originated from a singular egg-like entity floating in the void. It eventually broke open, giving birth to everything—time, space, matter, and consciousness.
“In the beginning, this [world] was just a golden egg… Having lived in it for a year, Prajapati broke it open. The one part became the silver half and the other half became the golden half…”
(Satapatha Brahmana, 11.1.6.1)
In Hindu philosophy, creation begins not with light, but with sound—the sacred syllable “Om.” This sound is said to be the vibration from which all existence emerges—a cosmic resonance that underlies and unites all things.
Does that sound eerily similar to the Big Bang’s singularity—a dense, enclosed potential giving rise to time and space?
Bridging Worlds: Rediscovery, Not Rivalry
We don’t need to prove that Hinduism “predicted” the Big Bang to appreciate its cosmological beauty. Nor do we need to diminish science and technology to uplift ancient thought.
Instead, we can marvel at how two different ways of knowing—spiritual intuition and scientific inquiry—converge on a shared mystery: the origin of everything.
As Carl Sagan once said:
“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.”
(Cosmos, 1980)
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about the Big Bang isn’t the explosion, but the silence that came before it—the same silence the Rishis heard when they first meditated on “Om.”
Whether through a telescope or a temple, we are still trying to answer the same question: Where did we come from? And maybe, just maybe, the answer was already whispered in the wind, written in Sanskrit, and carried in starlight.
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