efore it was
requisite to adopt other means than fortuitous chance for giving them an
appropriate combination, and symmetrical arrangement. The Supreme,
accordingly, produced an egg, in which the elementary principles might
be deposited, and nurtured into maturity." "All the primary atoms,
qualities, and principles--the seeds of future worlds--that had been
evolved from the substance of Brahm, were now collected together, and
deposited in the newly produced egg. And into it, along with them,
entered the self-existent himself, under the assumed form of Brahm; and
then he sat vivifying, expanding, and combining the elements, a whole
year of the creation, or four thousand three hundred millions of solar
years! During this amazing period, the wondrous egg floated like a
bubble on the abyss of primeval waters, increasing in size, and blazing
refulgent as a thousand suns. At length the Supreme, who dwelt therein,
burst the shell of the stupendous egg, and issued forth under a new
form, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. Along
with him there issued forth another form, huge and measureless. What
could that be? All the elementary principles having now been matured,
and disposed into an endless variety of orderly collocations, and
combined into one harmonious whole, they darted into visible
manifestation under the form of the present glorious universe! A
universe now finished, and ready made, with its entire apparatus, of
earth, sun, moon, and stars. What, then, is this multiform universe? It
is but a harmoniously arranged expansion of primordial principles and
qualities. And whence are these? Educed or evolved from the divine
substance of Brahm. Hence it is that the universe is so constantly
spoken of, even by mythologists, as a manifested form of Brahm himself,
the supreme, invisible spirit. Hence, too, under the notion that it is
the manifestation of a being who may assume every variety of corporeal
form, is the universe often personified, or described as if its
different parts were only the different members of a person, of
prodigious magnitude, in human form. It is declared that the hairs of
his body are the trees of the forest; of his head, the clouds; of his
beard, the lightning. His breath is the circling atmosphere; his voice,
the thunder; his eyes, the sun and moon; his veins, the rivers; his
nails, the rocks; his bones, the lofty mountains![25]

"The substantial fabrics of all worlds having no