In the Rigvedic vision, the cosmos is not a dead stage of matter but a living order—an ever-expanding house of being. The loka—the “world” in which the gods move and mortals pray—is depicted as a tripartite cosmos: earth (pṛthivī), air/atmosphere (antarikṣa), and heaven (dyauḥ/div).[1] Far from being an abstract cosmology, this threefold division was the very grammar of experience. The Rigvedic poets sang of earth not as inert soil but as mother, of the mid-space as a living corridor of winds and rains, and of heaven as the radiant summit where divine presence shines. In doing so, they placed humanity in a cosmos alive with agency and moral order.
The Three Realms
To the seer, the sky is not empty distance but an arched vault (nāka)—a threshold separating the familiar from the divine.[2] This differs starkly from later Purāṇic imagination, where the heavens are increasingly populated with detailed lokas stacked in mechanical sequence. In the Rigveda, the tripartite order is simpler, more symbolic: solar radiance belongs to heaven, lightning and wind to the middle-air, and fertile growth to earth.[3] In some hymns, each realm is multiplied into threes—three heavens, three earths, three atmospheres—forming six rajāṃsi, as if to emphasize that reality is layered, inexhaustible, not to be reduced to one level of description.[4] This is less a primitive error than a profound recognition: reality is multivalent, experienced differently by ritual, by vision, and by the senses.
Heaven and Its “Luminous Spaces”
The hymns name the sky with poetic precision: its “summit” (sānu), its “surface” (viṣṭap), and its “ridge” (pṛṣṭha).[5] Within heaven itself, poets discern three luminous regions (trī rocanā)—lower, middle, and highest.[6] The highest, uttama, is spoken of as the dwelling of gods, Fathers, and Soma, a realm “beyond birds and men.”[7] Here, the Rigvedic vision anticipates but does not yet ossify into the later Purāṇic lokas like Svarga or Brahmaloka. Rather, it holds open a luminous mystery: heaven is not merely overhead space, but the dimension of transcendence itself.
Heaven and Earth as a Pair
The Rigveda often praises heaven and earth together as rodasī—the two halves of existence, the parents of gods and men.[8] They are likened to two great bowls (camvā) facing each other,[9] or to wheels bound by an axle.[10] These metaphors are not primitive geometry but an attempt to articulate enclosure, intimacy, and wholeness. Unlike the later Purāṇic dualism where earth becomes the low realm of suffering and heaven a reward, the Rigvedic pairing is one of complementarity: earth and heaven are partners in sustaining ṛta, the cosmic law.
The Atmosphere (antarikṣa)
The middle realm is the restless space of clouds, lightning, and storm. It is called “watery” (rājas) and sometimes “black,” when night or tempest veils the sky.[11] Yet this “dark” middle is also a place of transformation—the arena of the Maruts, of Indra’s thunder, of rain that links heaven and earth. Unlike later cosmologies that treat the middle-world as an afterthought, the Rigveda prizes it as the dynamic mediator of the cosmic whole.
The Highest Heaven
The poets also glimpse a tṛtīya, a third and highest heaven, associated with Viṣṇu’s strides, with Soma, and with the cosmic waters.[12] Here, the Vedic cosmos is not flat but open-ended: there is always a beyond, a higher realm of light. Sometimes, a simpler binary is invoked: pārthiva (earth-near) and divya (heaven-facing).[13] In either case, the Rigvedic scheme refuses to let the world close upon itself; it insists that human ritual, rightly performed, reaches across thresholds into transcendent domains.
The Night
Night, too, was a mystery. One hymn marvels that Savitṛ “goes around night on both sides,” capturing sunset and sunrise as the bounds of darkness.[14] Later ritualists would puzzle over how the sun returns to the east without tunneling under the earth, but the early poet is content with wonder. Elsewhere he confesses ignorance of where stars go by day.[15] This candor is the mark of the Vedic mind—not a failure but a refusal to replace mystery with premature dogma.
The Earth (pṛthivī)
Earth is named with reverence: mahī (“great”), uttānā (“outstretched”), apārā (“boundless”), pṛthivī (“broad”). She is even imagined as circular like a wheel.[16] Unlike the later Purāṇas that measure mountains in yojanas and worlds in crores, the Rigveda prefers awe to arithmetic. Its poetry is not an ignorance of science but a different science: one that measures reality in reverence, not in numbers.
Cosmic Order (ṛta)
Underlying all is ṛta, the principle of order. To live in harmony with ṛta was not merely to appease the gods but to attune oneself to the deep law by which sun and thunder, rain and sacrifice, each keep their place. Unlike the later dharma, which became tied to social duty and caste, ṛta in the Rigveda was cosmic, elemental, universal. It is here that the Rigvedic worldview deserves defense: it did not divide the sacred and natural, but saw them as one. To honor ṛta was to honor the unity of being itself.
In contrast, the Purāṇic imagination, with its elaborated heavens and moralistic afterworlds, risks turning the cosmos into a bureaucratic ledger of karma. But the Rigvedic vision is freer, more luminous: it sees cosmos as a house alive with fire, water, air, and divine breath. If one seeks a spiritual ecology for our age, it is not the later Purāṇic cosmography that inspires, but the Rigvedic—where earth and sky are partners, night a mystery, and heaven always beckons as an open horizon.
References
- RV 8.106.9. ↩︎
- RV passim on nāka; cf. AV 4.143 // VS 17.67. ↩︎
- RV references distinguishing solar vs. meteorological phenomena. ↩︎
- RV passages on three earths/heavens and six rajāṃsi. ↩︎
- RV 1.125.5; cf. 3.21. ↩︎
- RV 5.60.6. ↩︎
- RV 1.155.5. ↩︎
- RV 2.27.15. ↩︎
- RV 3.55. ↩︎
- RV 10.89.4. ↩︎
- RV 1.124.5; 5.85.2; 1.35.2; 8.43.6. ↩︎
- RV 4.53.5; 5.69; 9.22.5; 3.30; 9.74; 10.45.3; 10.123; 7.99. ↩︎
- RV 1.62.5; 4.53.3. ↩︎
- RV 5.81.4; cf. AB 3.44.4. ↩︎
- RV 1.24. ↩︎
- RV 10.89.4. ↩︎
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