How life appeared on our planet, according to the Vedas
Often, we just take the story of Daksa as a pastime and don't bother to check the dates, but when we do that, we find that it provides a fascinating explanation of how life appeared on our planet.
In paleontology, it's believed that life on Earth started at about 3.5 billion years ago (some studies put the date earlier, up to 4.4 billion years ago), with the first multicelled animals (Metazoan) appearing about 800 million years ago. Of course, modern scholars attribute this to evolution and the shaping of the environment by volcanic activity and other factors, but the Srimad Bhagavatam offers a different explanation that is quite interesting.
In the 4th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, we hear the story of Daksa being killed by Vīrabhadra as a result of his offenses to Lord Shiva. Often, we just take it as a pastime and don't bother to check the dates, but when we do that, we find that it provides a fascinating explanation of how life appeared on our planet.
According to Srimad Bhagavatam, Daksa appeared during the reign of Svāyambhuva Manu. The Bhagavatam explains that there are 14 Manus in a day of Brahma, and this sequence of Manus is the key to being able to understand the chronology of the different events being discussed there.
Svāyambhuva Manu is the first of the 14 Manus, and his reign corresponds to the early history of our planet. When he took charge, Bhu-Mandala was still submerged in the water of the causal ocean, and white Lord Varāha had to appear to rescue it. The dates for these pastimes roughly correspond to what modern astronomers give for the formation of the planets in our solar system.
According to the Srimad Bhagavatam, Daksa started his work of populating Bhu-Mandala shortly after that. However, his work was interrupted when he offended Lord Shiva and was a result killed by Vīrabhadra, the gigantic black created by him after the death of his wife Sati. Vīrabhadra cut his head and threw it into the fire, but after the demigods prayed to Lord Shiva, he was resurrected with the head of a goat.
Daksa briefly used this body to conclude the sacrifice, but due to shame, he later left it, being reborn as the son of the Pracetas. However, this time he took birth as a human being, a Kṣatriya, without the powers to create population as before. He had then to perform austerities, and was able to regain his post much later, during the reign of Caksusa Manu (the 6th in the sequence). During this period, his post remained vacant.
Prabhupada confirms this point in his purport to SB 6.4.17:
“Dakṣa was first born during the reign of Svāyambhuva Manu, but because of offending Lord Śiva he was punished by having the head of a goat substituted for his own head. Thus insulted, he had to give up that body, and in the sixth manvantara, called the Cākṣuṣa manvantara, he was born of the womb of Māriṣā as Dakṣa. In this connection Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura quotes this verse:
cākṣuṣe tv antare prāpte prāk-sarge kāla-vidrute
yaḥ sasarja prajā iṣṭāḥ sa dakṣo daiva-coditaḥ
“His previous body had been destroyed, but he, the same Dakṣa, inspired by the supreme will, created all the desired living entities in the Cākṣuṣa manvantara.” (Bhāg. 4.30.49) Thus Dakṣa regained his previous opulence and again begot thousands and millions of children to fill the three worlds.”
Mādhavendra Puri and Siddharth Chabra Prabhus put the date for the start of the Caksusa Manvantara at 858 million years ago in their book The Big Bang and the Sages. This date, which takes into consideration Sridhara Swami's factor of two, matches modern studies that put the appearance of multicellular life on our planet at 800 to 600 million years ago.
Scientific evidence is considered much weaker than scriptural evidence, because it is based on the perception of the senses and mundane intelligence, but when both the scriptures and material science point to the same dates, it's something we should take into consideration.
From this chronology, it appears that the modern studies that put the appearance of the first life forms on our planet at about 4.4 billion years ago may be correct after all, since this fits well into the chronology given in the Puranas.
Fossils from these earlier periods suggest that life remained very primitive until about 800 million years ago, when the first multicellular animals appeared, with a boom in terms of variety of lifeforms happening about 600 million years ago, after the climatic conditions on our planet became more favorable.
We can see that these dates match the description of the Srimad Bhagavatam, with the work of Daksa in populating the universe being abruptly interrupted in its early stages by his death in the Svāyambhuva manvantara, and being resumed only about 800 million years ago with his rebirth and the resumption of his work of creation, leading to the creation of more advanced lifeforms and the adjustment of the climate of our planet to something more suitable for them. By these descriptions, the hiatus of about 3 billion years in the evolution of life on our planet is explained.
One observation, however, is that the Srimad Bhagavatam describes the existence of plants and animal forms, as well as a small human population in Bhu-mandala during this period, with the reign of Pṛthu Maharaja and so on. However, these descriptions appear to apply to the high-dimensional Bhu-mandala, and not necessarily to the gross dimension we live on. It's clear that the death of Daksa affected population even in the high-dimensional Bhu-mandala, and therefore it would not be unreasonable to conclude that the effect could have been much stronger in the gross dimension we live in, which would be the last to the populated.
Since there is no mention of the killing of Daksa being a regular occurrence, this description also suggests that things may happen differently on other days of Brahma.
All of this also helps us to understand the nature of creation as explained in the Vedas. Books like the Bible mention the creation of the Universe and all life forms as something that happened suddenly, but the Vedas narrate a slower and difficult struggle on the part of Brahma and the Prajāpatis, in a process that is not only much slower but happens repeatedly throughout each cycle of creation, with life going through repeated cycles of creation and destruction on each manvantara, and unexpected events, like the premature death of Daksa playing important roles. The explanation for the appearance of life according to the Vedas can be thus verified through experimental evidence, which proves the veracity and accuracy of these narrations.
From these descriptions, we can see that the stories described in the Srimad Bhagavatam are not just a set of allegories, but a detailed description of the history of our universe, descriptions that were originally registered by great sages and demigods who personally witnessed these events, and reached us by the process of disciplic succession.
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