The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20.s3.9

v1.c20.s3.9

The name, Prajāpati, means lord of offspring, and is applied once in the Rigveda⁵ to Savitṛ, who is described as the Prajāpati of the world, and the supporter of heaven, and also to Soma as compared with Tvaṣṭṛ and Indra. As a distinct deity Prajāpati is naturally invoked to bestow offspring, in one case along with Viṣṇu, Tvaṣṭṛ, and Dhātṛ; he is said to make cows prolific, and in the Atharvaveda and the other texts of the later literature his connexion with offspring is regularly referred to. But Prajāpati is essentially in the later Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas regarded as the chief of the gods, and in special the father god, who produces everything, who is the father of the gods⁶ on the one hand, but also of the Asuras,⁷ and who is of course the first sacrificer.⁸ Prajāpati is the hero of the cosmogonic myths of the whole of the Brāhmaṇa period; he creates the worlds and the Vedas,⁹ and the castes.¹⁰ In the Sūtras he is specifically identified with Brahman,¹¹ the god, the masculine of the idea of Brahman, ‘holy prayer,’ or the ‘holy power’. The predominance of Prajāpati, however, is not in the slightest affected by the development of this god in the Brāhmaṇas.