Hiranya – Garbha

Description

In the Rigveda, Hiranyagarbha “is said to have arisen in the beginning, the one lord of all beings, who upholds heaven and earth, who gives life and breath, whose command even the gods obey, who is the god of all gods, and the one animating principle of their being.” According to Manu, Hiranyagarbha was Brahma, the first male, formed by the indiscernible eternal First Cause in a golden egg resplendent as the sun. “Having continued a year in the egg, Brahma divided it into two parts by his mere thought, and with these two shells he formed the heaven and the earth; and in the middle he placed the sky, the eight regions, and the eternal abode of the waters.”

In this version of this concept, Nayanmitra was inspired by a late 19th century painting of the Kangra School. The golden egg represents the birth of the cosmos, the source of all energy which starts floating in the primordial waters.