Creation — as told by each of the six philosophies

There is no single Hindu creation story, and this is not a defect. Six orthodox philosophies give six different accounts, the Purāṇas give several more, and the oldest of all — the Nāsadīya Sūkta — ends by doubting whether the question can be answered. What follows is each account on its own terms.

Nyāya–Vaiśeṣika: assembly from eternal atoms

Atoms of earth, water, fire and air are eternal and uncreated. At the beginning of a cycle they are set in motion — Nyāya attributes this to the will of Īśvara acting in accordance with the accumulated karma of souls — and combine into dyads, triads and thence into gross bodies and worlds. At dissolution the process reverses and the atoms rest, unchanged. Nothing is created from nothing; what happens is arrangement. Īśvara here is an efficient cause, a maker working with materials, not a source from which the material itself proceeds.

Sāṅkhya: unfolding, with no maker at all

There is no creator. Prakṛti, in which the three guṇas are in equilibrium, is disturbed by the mere proximity of puruṣa — as iron moves near a magnet without the magnet doing anything. The equilibrium breaks, and evolution proceeds in a fixed order: mahat, then ahaṅkāra, then from ahaṅkāra the mind, the ten senses and the five subtle elements, and from these the five gross elements. Since the effect pre-exists in its cause, nothing new is produced; the universe is unfolded out of what already implicitly contained it, like a tree from a seed.

Yoga: the same, with Īśvara added

Patañjali accepts Sāṅkhya's cosmology and adds Īśvara — but note what his Īśvara does. He is defined as a special puruṣa untouched by kleśa, karma and its fruits, the first teacher, unlimited by time. He is not described as the maker of the world. His function in the system is practical: surrender to him (īśvara-praṇidhāna) is one of the most effective means of stilling the mind.

Pūrva Mīmāṁsā: the question does not arise

The most radical position. Mīmāṁsā holds that the world is beginningless and requires no creation event at all. The Veda is eternal, the sacrificial order is eternal, and the appearance of creation-talk in the Veda is read as arthavāda — statements that praise or contextualise an injunction rather than describe a fact. There is no creator, no first moment, and no need of either.

Vedānta: Brahman as both material and efficient cause

Brahman is not a maker who assembles pre-existing stuff; Brahman is what the world is made of and what makes it — the spider producing the web from itself is the Upaniṣads' own image. The schools then divide on what kind of causality this is.

The Purāṇic account, and the Āgamic

Alongside the philosophies run the narrative cosmogonies: Hiraṇyagarbha, the golden germ floating on the waters; Brahmā emerging from the lotus at Viṣṇu's navel; Viṣṇu in yoga-nidrā between cycles; and in the Śaiva Āgamas the unfolding of the thirty-six tattvas from Śiva through Śakti — an account that begins above puruṣa and prakṛti rather than with them, adding eleven tattvas that Sāṅkhya does not have.

And the oldest answer of all

॥ ❖ ॥

Last revised 2026-08-16. Corrections are welcome — see how this site is written.