Stephen Hawking asks in his bestseller 'A Brief History of time', "what is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"
One major impact of the Abrahamic religion on the population across the world is to think that everything in the world is created and the world itself is a creation. For them, there could exist nothing without creation although they are not clear about cessation. Scholars know that Judaism is clear about the death of everything including the soul, however, Christianity imported the concept of the immortal soul as their European legacy from the Greeks and Roman, especially from the writings of Plato. Islam was heavily influenced by Christianity, hence, the extension of the concept. Ironically, the current scientific view about the universe is the same where Big Bang was the creation but the end of the universe is uncertain.
The Indian view is free of such dogma about creation. Why there should be a "created dogma" for everything? Yes, many things are created and many things die yet many things did not have been created and will not die. A pot is created and gets destroyed, so, the body is created and gets destroyed but the soul is neither created nor destroyed. For the theists, God is the creator not created and does not die. For scientists, matter energy is neither created nor destroyed. The 'ignorance of anything' is a 'non-created' entity yet it ceases. What about knowledge? "God created the world with knowledge or in ignorance? God cannot be ignorant being omniscient, so, knowledge must be prior to God or at least one with God. Hence Knowledge is a 'non-created' entity" - Vedantic reasoning.
Knowledge could be understood as fire (Reference: Kathopnishad, Gita). One candle ignites another, the one which has more fuel, blazes and one which has less fuel, dulls. In this sense, fire is neither created nor destroyed, it manifests depending on the fuel. 'Knowledge of something' is similarly communicated from one heart to another and its intensity depends upon intellect. Intellectual prowess is enhanced to comprehend more, however, the fire of knowledge remains the same. Radical ideas in science such as the Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein, the Uncertainty Principle by Heisenberg or the Incompleteness Theorem by Gödel did not spontaneously come into existence, they all had a long series of intellectual exercises, so much so, if they had not come up with the idea, some other would have developed, maybe using some other kind of symbols or taking some more time. They increased the brightness which revealed more, however, the light of knowledge to reveal was same throughout the history. A person knows a thousand things and another knows just ten, the difference may be in intellectual capacity but the fire of knowledge is the same in both.
Therefore, the Vedas are a 'non-created entity' being pure Knowledge. The knowledge which cannot be revealed by the senses or the intellect. It resides in the heart of all and kindles in the heart of a pupil by the fire in the heart of the teacher. It is not an inherent property of a race or a creed, even the beasts have right over the Vedas. As the wet wood does not catch fire, so the impure heart does not catch the Vedic knowledge. Hence, some standards were developed for transmitting and receiving Vedic knowledge.
As the fire is a 'non-created' entity and passes on the baton so, the Vedas are the non-created entity and pass through the generations. Hence, the Vedas are called Apaurusheya. For those who believe in God, the Vedas are one with God as breath is one with us. Neither we exist without breath nor breath exists without us (Naiyayikas view). For those not bound to the doctrine of God, the Vedas are prior to God (Mimansakas view).
The phrase 'breathes fire' in Hawking's question incidentally matches with the term used by proponents of Nyaya philosophy.
