Universe is finite - says Hinduism

It has been debated in the brainy societies even from the prehistoric times, whether the universe we live in, is finite or infinite ? People took both the sides, proposing arguments in favor of the two but, the question was not resolved. A difficult question demands an intelligent brain to answer and this came out in the last century from the ‘brain of the millennium’, none other than Albert Einstein.

Einstein, using his general theory of relativity concluded that, the universe we live in is in fact – finite but, bounded. The implication is that – we could never cross the universe, but we could roam on it endlessly without finding an end of it. The analogy is with an ant moving on an apple without finding an end.

This concept of Einstein is inbuilt in the – Nataraj idol, in the dance of the lord Shiva. According to the tradition, the Universe is nothing but the lord Nataraj, an avatar of the lord Shiva, dancing. As you could observe in the image here, there is a circular edifice around the dancing lord. This circular edifice is limiting or it confines the dance or the lord [the Universe] into a finite boundary. The implication is nothing but, the Universe is finite but, bounded – the conclusion of the modern cosmology that comes though the general theory of relativity. Though the statue of lord Nataraj is available in many sizes, only due to this reason, every statue of the lord Nataraj has a circular edifice, limiting the lord, in other words limiting the Universe.

So, the ancient Hindus were aware of many secrets of the Universe well in advance, even before the birth of the modern science itself, the ‘finiteness of the Universe’ is one such fact, encoded in the statue of lord Nataraj. Apart from this fact, the statue of the lord Nataraj has many more encoded mysteries in it and few were already discussed in the earlier articles on this site, some more will be presented in the future.

Apart from this, in many places of the Vedic literature - it has been mentioned that the Universe we live in - is finite. The Hinduism also says that - the universe we live in is just a small grain in the endless, the absolute, the GOD. There are countless universes like the universe we live in, the Bhooloka, the Universe of the Earth.