The latter bipartition may also be formulated as a quadripartition in which one fourth lies outside the cosmos. This means that the real dualism concerns either underworld (the abode of the Asuras) and heaven (the world of the Devas) or underworld and the tripartite universe as a totality. However, the basic opposition in the structure is between positive and negative and in this connection the subterranean underworld rather than earth itself forms an antithesis to the light of heaven. Indeed, heaven and earth, too, form a dualism non-existent before the cosmogony which differentiated light and darkness. It is a fact, at least, that this dualism fits into a larger structure of binary oppositions: Asuras-Devas, chaos-cosmos, non-Aryans-Aryans, night-day, darkness-light, evil-good. Whether Kuiper’s view (1979, 5) that this dualism is based on the two moieties of the tribal organization, is correct, is difficult to prove or to disprove. However, there is a different dualism, already noticed by Kirfel (1920, p. 13* f.), of upper world and underworld. The cosmographical dualism of earth and heaven does not seem to belong to a more extensive structure. 3 In some texts we also find a sevenfold universe. The threefoldness is based on a preference for triadic series 2 and seems to form an amplification of the bipartition. 1 Actually the difference between the two is not fundamental. ![]() According to most publications the Vedic conceptions of the cosmos are either bipartite (heaven and earth) or tripartite (i.e.
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