ZBORNIK - Matica srpska

The Wider Perspective of Some Common Beliefs
We have noticed above some behaviour-patterns of Indo-European
life which are mimetized in Greek and Indian drama. Sustaining
the branches of these patterns are the roots of certain beliefs
of cosmological signification. For the sake of brevity we shall state
those beliefs and give cursory comments. These five notions are:
the parole of the Universal Egg, multitheism (bahudevatva, godmingling,
theokrasis), perception of five elements as extension of the
five senses, notion of time as a cycle of four ages, and metempsychosis.
Whereas the behaviour-patterns, such as, oath-taking and
others described earlier give shape to modes of action in drama, the
philosophical notions about the universe define the identity of the
individual. The Great Egg does not have a beginning in the same
sense as Darwin's first cell. It was not created in a given point of
time. The beginning is taking place again and again, after every
cycle, or in other words, it is taking place all the time. And so man,
a 'pinda', is being eclipsed and renewed, polluted and purified
constantly. Not only man but no being comes to an end, death is
not the end of existence, the shades of the departed either inhabit
the Hades or as the other view has it, they may be reincarnated.
There can be extinction only if there is an end to time. This 'end'
or pralaya is no end but a suspended animation, a waiting for rebirth.
In the Rigvedic hymns, Sky and Earth are looked upon as the
first parents and in some other verses the Golden Embryo (hiranyagarbha)
is thought to be floating on primeval waters (RV 10.121.1).
By the age of the Brahmanas, 'nonbeing became being; the latter
changed into an egg, which after a year by splitting in two became
Heaven and Earth; whatever was produced is the sun, which is
Brahma' (Chand. Up. V.19). 17 The idea is repeated in the Pelasgian
muthos where Eurynome laid the Egg out of which came the Universe.
18 The Homeric and the Orphic creation muthoi also mention
that black-winged night was courted by Wind and thus laid a silver
Egg from which the Universe was hatched. 19
From the Great Egg vision of the Universe, which accepts the
basic sexuality of creation, unlike the Judaic muthos of Genesis
which introduces sexuality as an outcome of original sin, we come
to Indo-Greek polytheism. It is not our purpose to trace the common
ancestry of Indian and Greek gods, whether through philological
method or through mythographic analysis. For study of drama,
we are content to note that fire sacrifice or yajna is the main mode
of worship and that in both the pantheons the divinities do not fall
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