Science in Hinduism: Science in Nataraj idol

This is the fourth one in the series of articles on the science in Nataraj idol.

This one reveals some more scientific details encoded in the Nataraj idol and these reflect the modern scientific findings.

The leaf like small things present on the outer edifice present around the lord Nataraj, the dancing god – in fact have deeper cosmological meanings. Some of them are present to the left of the circle circumference and some are present to the right of the idol.

It is interesting to see that these leaf like things are all not in the same direction. The leaves on one side are in the clockwise direction and those in the other side are in the anti-clock wise direction. These numbers and directions have deeper significance scientifically - specifically etymologically.

The Hindu religion – was highly developed during the Vedic times and the Vedic sages had a comprehensive idea about the world we live in, what we are, where from we came, who created all these, what the world is made with, where the universe ends and starts, our place in the universe, the place of our universe in the endless creation, what lies beyond the universe we live in, who manages this universe and others, etc.. these were all known to the Vedic sages in detail. But, the great science of the modern day is dumb to all those real questions, unfortunately!

Even the great scientists of our age are wondering, how the ancient Hindus had the knowledge that only the modern science has discovered recently with sophisticated instruments, which the ancients possibly had no change to posses.

The late scientist Carl Sagan, the past director of NASA, had mentioned in his famous book ‘Cosmos’ (1980) that "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 births and deaths. It is the only religion in which the time cycles correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still."

According to the modern cosmological estimates, the age of the Universe is around 13.7 billion years. This almost coincides with the findings of the ancient Hindus.

The universe we live in, in fact under goes endless cycles of birth and deaths – according to the Hindu cosmology. This is in fact is present in one of the ‘sandhya vandan’ hymns – dedicated to the lord, present in the ‘surya suktham’. Here it is mentioned that – “o lord! Thou have created this world, as you had created it before countless times, etc..”. This in fact suggests that the universe is cyclic in nature.

The modern Big bang cosmology in fact agrees that such cyclic nature is possible in the universe. Unfortunately, the modern science is NOT matured enough to ascertain the point, but the scientists are suspecting such possibility.

But, the Hindu sages were sure of such cyclic behavior of the universe. The ancient Hindu sages were excellent scientists in fact but, not based on the trial and error process in coming to conclusions and they didn’t use any instruments – the modern scientists are familiar with.

The details on the Universe and its cyclic nature are described in the Bramhanda Purana, the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagvata Purana, the Manusmriti [the book on Hindu Law] and in other scriptures too to varying degrees of details.

With subtler sensual organs – that will bloom out of ‘tapasya’ the ancient Hindu sages got all the knowledge and even anyone can develop that insight by ‘tapasya’ – the Hindu scriptures claim.

So, the leaf like structures circumscribing the dancing god, reveal the same concept of the cyclic nature of the universe. The one side leaves that are in the clockwise direction indicate that the dance continues in one direction and the other leaves in the anti-clock wise direction indicate that the dance reverses.

Cosmologically, this implies that the universe expands for a while and later on the universe contracts – as claimed by the modern Big bang cosmology and Einsteinian cosmology.

The number of leaves that are clockwise, in fact represent a precise number of years for the expansion of the Universe and for the contraction of the universe it takes the same number of years as represented by the same number of leaves in the reverse, in the anti-clock wise direction.

Unfortunately, this number I am not sure yet – how many years they represent. But, I will present it later on – after research on the scriptures related to the dancing lord, Nataraj - if the lord blesses me with the secret!

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