preempted the modern proponents of the oscillating theory (see chapter 10), even to the setting of the period of the cycles at several billions of years.1, 2 Two other schools of Indian cosmology, the Jains and the Mimamsa, held the universe to be eternal and changeless. The modern steady state theory (see chapter 8) thus was predated, at least in concept, by two or three millennia. cultural universals China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India were not alone in spawning cosmological hypotheses. Virtually