Is earth flat? (Rig ved 10:58:3)

Namaste

Welcome back dear readers. We are here to debunk another stupid claim about Vedas.

People often give the relevation of Rig Ved 10:58:3 to show that earth is considered flat in hinduism. We are for sure that their Sanskrit is as weak as Griffith(an English guy who translated vedas to English). 

     Let's see what's the explanation 

 People like Sulaiman Razvi just quote random verses and talks rubbish about it. One must see the context of the verse before putting allegations. In hymn 58, the context is about 'spirit'. We all know that vedas uses poetic devices quite efficiently such as Metaphors, Similes, Anaphora, Alliteration..etc.The verse 10:58:3 has the presence of metaphor in it. According to Griffith the verse says

       

   "Thy spirit, that went far away, away to the four-cornered earth, We cause to come to thee again that thou mayst live and sojourn here."

Contradiction 1:The verse says that your spirit went far away to the four cornered earth. But don't we live in earth? So if we die, our spirit would still be in earth initially.

Contradiction 2:  Most scholars believe that the word "मनः॑" talks about our mind which is quite unstable and is deviated by the material things. It can go in four direction. The manipulated verse says that they cause your mind to come back from four cornered earth. Since we live on earth, our mind will go to four directions on earth. Then where would it return to? So they mean that our mind go to earth and come back to earth(as we live on earth, our mind comes back to us)

. How's that possible.

These explanations contradicts the verse content. The word 'four cornered' might be quite confusing for non hindu. 

Reality: The verse in reality says that "we cause your spirit which has gone far in four directions(which means our mind is unstable and keeps going here and there in fantasy) on earth to return"

This would become quite clear when we see the hindi translation

"(ते) हे मानस रोग में ग्रस्त मनुष्य ! तेरा (यत्-मनः) जो मन (चतुर्भृष्टिं भूमिम्) चार अर्थात् ऊँची, नीची, गीली, रेतीली, तपाने-सतानेवाली, विभक्तियों-स्थलियोंवाली भूमि को (दूरकं जगाम) दूर चला गया है उस (ते तत्…पूर्ववत्)"

Connotation: - मानस रोग के रोगी का मन भ्रान्त होकर जब-“मैं ऊँचे पर्वत पर हूँ, मुझे कौन उतारे, मैं खड्डे में हूँ, मुझे कौन उभारे, मैं रेतीली भूमि में पड़ा हूँ या मैं कीचड़ में धँसा जा रहा हूँ” आदि प्रलाप करे, तो उस समय उसको आश्वासन दिया जाये कि हमने वहाँ से तुझे बचा लिया है आदि। इस प्रकार उसकी चिकित्सा करे 

Conclusion: So, in order to understand any text, one must research about the previous and next verses and the overall context of the hymn.

To add more confirmation to the fact that earth is round, we can consider the Varaha Avatar of Mahavishnu. Varaha avtar is often seen holding round earth on his majestic tusks. This may not be literal but enough to prove that earth is somewhat spherical 

   We hope your doubt about the flat earth philosophy is clear now. Feel free to ask any doubt in the comment section.

                                         Team

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