Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

by Charles Seife

Hinduism was steeped in the symbolism of duality. (Of course, this idea occasionally came up in the Western world, where it was promptly branded as heretical. One example is the Manichaean heresy, which saw the world as being under the influence of equal and opposite sources of good and evil.) As with the yin and yang of the Far East and Zoroaster’s dualism of good and evil in the Near East, creation and destruction were intermingled in Hinduism. The god Shiva was both creator and destroyer of the world and was depicted with the drum of creation in one hand and a flame of destruction in another (Figure 13). However, Shiva also represented nothingness. One aspect of the deity, Nishkala Shiva, was literally the Shiva “without parts.” He was the ultimate void, the supreme nothing—lifelessness incarnate. But out of the void, the universe was born, as was the infinite. Unlike the Western universe, the Hindu cosmos was infinite in extent; beyond our own universe were innumerable other universes.