The worlds and the ages

An age, yuga, is first a yoke or a pair, and then a long span of time. The tradition counts four ages in a cycle: the Kṛta or Satya, the Tretā, the Dvāpara and the Kali, each shorter and darker than the one before. Righteousness stands whole in the first and fails by degrees until the last, which the tradition holds to be the present one. Four ages together make a great age, a mahāyuga, and a thousand great ages make a kalpa, a day of Brahmā, at whose end the world is drawn back and afterwards put forth again. The figures in the table are the tradition's own reckoning of time and are not dates of history.

The hymn speaks of the ages in three ways. The names Yugādikṛt and Yugāvarta make the Lord the maker of the beginning of the ages and the turner of their cycle, so that time itself rests in His hand. Bhīṣma's opening answer says that all beings come forth from Him when an age begins and return to Him when it ends. And Brahmā's verse bows to Him who bears a thousand crores of ages, a crore being ten million, so that the number says only that He is beyond counting. The Gītā verse near the end promises that He comes into being age after age to protect the good and set dharma firm.

The tale, as the tradition tells it, is of the gods, who had lost their strength and fortune and sought the nectar of immortality. With the asuras they agreed to churn the Milk Ocean. Mount Mandara was uprooted for the churning rod and the serpent Vāsuki served as the rope; as the mountain sank, the Lord became a Tortoise, Kūrma, and bore it on His back. Many things rose from the waters, among them Śrī, who chose Him, the nectar in the hands of Dhanvantari, and a deadly poison that Śiva drank. The Lord then took a woman's form, Mōhinī, and gave the nectar to the gods.

The hymn does not tell the story, but it carries its marks. The name Mahādridhṛt calls the Lord the Bearer of the great mountain, recalling Mandara on His back as the Tortoise in the churning, and the hill Govardhana that He lifted. The commentary hears the Tortoise in more names than that one. The nectar the gods sought is the word that stands in the names Amṛta and Amṛtapa, and Śrī, who rose from the ocean and chose Him, is the Śrī of the many names of her house.

Hiraṇya is gold and garbha is a womb or a seed: the golden womb, the golden germ out of which the world unfolds. The Ṛgveda has a hymn to Hiraṇyagarbha as the creator, and the Purāṇas call Brahmā by the name because he is born from the golden egg of creation. Later thought also uses it for the soul clothed in a subtle body.

In the hymn the name is the Lord's own. It praises Him first as the golden seed of creation, and then as the golden womb of the worlds, in which all the worlds lie waiting before they come forth. The tradition holds that Brahmā is a being whom the Lord has made and within whom He dwells as the Self, so that the name is heard as His, the source even of the Creator; the names Padmanābha and Prapitāmaha, the lotus springing from His navel and the great-grandfather, say the same.

The mahābhūtas are the five great elements of Indian thought: space (ākāśa), air (vāyu), fire (agni), water (āpaḥ) and earth (pṛthivī). The Upaniṣads tell that they come into being one after another from the Self, space first, then air, fire, water and earth, and that everything made is built from them. The word bhūta also means a being, or what has come to be, and the many names of the hymn that begin with bhūta, the maker and the bearer of beings, use that sense.

In the closing creed the great elements stand among the things that arise from Nārāyaṇa: seers, ancestors and gods, the great elements and the basic substances, and this whole moving and unmoving world. The name Mahābhūta calls the Lord the Great Being, whom time does not limit, and the great elements themselves are His body; the name Ādhāranilaya makes Him the home of every support, the earth, the elements and the great powers. This is the Śrīvaiṣṇava thought that the whole world, without life and with it, is His body and He its Self.

The Milk Ocean, kṣīrasāgara, is the sea of milk in the old picture of the world, one of the seven oceans, and the place where the Lord is said to rest on the coils of Śēṣa with Śrī beside Him. The first meditation verse sets Him on a gem-bright shore of it, seated on a seat of strung pearls, with white clouds above Him raining nectar; the fourth speaks of Him resting on the serpent.

The Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers count five ways in which the Lord is present to His creatures: in His highest form in Vaikuṇṭha, in His arrays, in His descents, as the Lord within every heart, and in the temple image. The Milk Ocean, called in Tamil Tiruppārkaṭal, is, in their teaching, the place of the arrays, and with Vaikuṇṭha it is one of the two sacred places of the tradition's hundred and eight that lie beyond the earth. The names Mahōdadhiśaya, 'He who rests on the great ocean', and Bhujagōttama recall Him there on the coils of Ādiśēṣa, and the name Mahādridhṛt recalls the mountain He bore when the ocean was churned.

Amṛta is a-mṛta, not dead: the deathless. As a noun it is the nectar or ambrosia of the gods, the drink that makes those who take it undying, and further it is immortality itself, the deathless state, a word that is also used for final release. The Purāṇic tale is that it was won when gods and asuras churned the Milk Ocean.

The hymn holds the word in several places. In the first meditation white clouds above the Lord let fall showers of it. The name Amṛta is the Lord Himself, who never dies and never grows less, and who is as nectar to those that take refuge in Him. The name Amṛtāṃśūdbhava makes Him the source of the moon with its nectar-rays, and Amṛtapa the Drinker of nectar, who delights in the sweetness of His own bliss; the love of His devotees is nectar to Him. The names Amṛtāśa and Amṛtavapus speak of His wish for every soul to reach the deathless state and of His own undying form.

The three worlds are the earth (bhūḥ), the air or space between (bhuvaḥ), and heaven (svaḥ), the realm of the gods. These three words are the sacred calls with which the Gāyatrī and the rites begin, and the Vēdas speak of the Lord as filling all three. The older Vēdic lists even count eleven gods for each of the three worlds, thirty-three in all.

In this hymn the three worlds are His body and His house. The meditation names Him as the one whose body is the three worlds, with the earth for His feet, the sky for His navel and the heavens for His head. The name Trilōkātmā calls Him their Self and Trilōkēśa their Lord; Trilōkadhṛt is the One who holds them up so that they do not fall, and Lōkatrayāśraya their refuge. The name Bhūrbhuvaḥsvastaru calls Him the tree that stands in all three, the worlds resting on Him as branches on a trunk, with creatures sheltering beneath. Vyāsa's own verse bows to Vāsudēva, by whose indwelling the three worlds are pervaded.

Later tellings count more worlds, fourteen in all, and the Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers place the eternal realm of Vaikuṇṭha above them every one. But the hymn keeps to three, the world that is seen and the two that rise above it, and says that all three are His body, upheld by Him as a self upholds its body.

Vaikuṇṭha is the highest abode of the Lord, the place that the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition also calls Paramapada, the Supreme Step, and the eternal realm. The word is vi-kuṇṭha, without dullness or blunting: a world where nothing is blunted or obstructed. There the Lord dwells with Śrī, served for ever by the eternal attendants, Viṣvaksēna, Śēṣa, Garuḍa and the rest, and joined at the last by the souls that are freed from the round of birth. The word is also used of the Lord Himself, as in the name that calls Him the Lord of Vaikuṇṭha.

A freed soul, the tradition teaches, goes there by the path of light, is received by the eternal ones, and sees the Lord as He truly is. The tradition's hundred and eight sacred places include two that are not of this earth, Vaikuṇṭha and the Milk Ocean.

The hymn speaks of this abode under several names: the One who abides in the highest place, the highest place to which the soul can rise, the final goal and refuge to which all paths lead, and the One whose abode is hard to reach, for only by His grace does a soul come to dwell there.