Introduction

To participate in a project where the aspiration of the organizers is to gradually build bridges between scientific and religious discourses that are customarily kept apart by hard boundaries of disciplines is an inspiring and a humbling task. This is especially so when the theme of the project is of such magnitude as expressed in the question: ‘Did the universe have a beginning?’

At the outset it may be observed that even if the word ‘beginning’, in sanskrit ‘Arambha’, is derived from conventional language, the notion of beginning lends itself to a variety of interpretations in diverse contexts, as the history of ideas bears witness to. The significance of these conceptual formulations can be grasped only when the entire network of ideas that form a given discourse is taken into account, be that scientific, philosophical or religious. We, therefore, need to proceed with caution. In the course of this presentation, I will briefly refer to examples from the Indian sources that demonstrate how different implications are read into the diverse philosophical formulations of this notion. An awareness of the absence of a general consensus about the conceptual content that is entailed in the notion of beginning, along with all its ramifications, it seems to me, makes the complex theme of “Cosmic Questions” even more intriguing. It is indeed, important for our present endeavor to uncover a conceptual space in which a dialogue between science and religion does not seek to ignore the questions that are intertwined with the soteriological dimensions of cosmological models or to stage an encounter of world religions in the process without the effort for, an authentic comprehension of the concerns that prompt different religious traditions to answer in the affirmative or in the negative the question, “Did the universe have a beginning?”

Contributed by: Dr. Anindita Balslev