베다신화학의 이분법적 세계관 연구

The characteristics of the dual cosmos in Vedic mythology

In this article, I attempt to construct the mythological framework of the Vedic cosmogony. The basic concept of Vedic religion is to be found in its cosmogony, that is, the myth which tells us how, in primordial times, this world came into existence. This myth owed its fundamental importance to the fact that was not merely a tale of things that had happened long ago,nor was a rational explanation of how this world had become what it is now. A special group of hindu gods, Asuras, was connected with this first stage. As for the Asuras themselves, they constitute the central problem of Vedic religion. After Indra had created the dual cosmos, the Asuras were no longer the only gods, since the dualism also extended to the world gods. Along with Indra a new group of gods made their entrance. Their names, Devas, was the celestial gods. The two parties of Devas and Asuras had to come to terms with each other. The Asuras are not fallen angels but potential gods. The Asuras had been driven away but not annihilated. They are not part of the cosmos but continued to exist beyond the pale, as a constancy to the existence and coherence of the ordered world. Vedic myths often don’t have complete narratives. However, I was able to find an underlying mythic framework and narrative. At certain intervals the war between Asuras and Devas was renewed. What then happens is the most momentous event in the whole cosmogony. A minor Vedic personified manifestation of solar energy, who is described as striding through the seven regions of the universe in three steps. Although it is impossible to trace all the reasons why Viṣṇu became a major deity, two of the main ones are the doctrine of his ‘descents(avatāra)’ to earth in various forms to save mankind, and his ritualistic pre-eminence as the personified Sacrifice. I tried to demonstrate that in the Veda Viṣṇu, far from being a subordinate assistant of Indra of greater importance than Indra himself. While Viṣṇu’s first two steps express his relationship with the two opposed parts of the cosmos, his third step corresponds to a transcendental world in which the two conflicting parties are united in an all-encompassing totality. At the moment Viṣṇu transcended the dualism of Asuras and Devas, just as he had transcended it in the beginning, when the dual cosmos arose. In the later cosmogonical myth of the churning of the ocean, as told in the MBh, Viṣṇu also stands above the two parties of the Asuras and Devas.