The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2392 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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Svayambh
(Skt., ‘unoriginated’). The capacity of objects to be self-existent, not dependent on the causal agency of another, and thus perhaps to sustain themselves from the idea concealed within them. It also represented an early attempt in Hinduism to recognize an unproduced Producer of all that is, an originator such as
Puru
a
,
Praj
pati
or
Brahm
. In the
Pur
as
, it becomes the principle of indefinite cosmic elaboration, but in
Advaita
and in the
Upani
ads
, it expresses the self-existent nature of
Brahman
.
Vai
avites
and
aivites
apply it to
Vi
u
and
iva
respectively. In Buddhism, it is applied to the
Buddha
as the one who is utterly independent of support in the apparent cosmos, and in Mah
y

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