The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c38.38

v2.c38.38

Already in the hymn to Viçvakarman there appears the desire to parallel the creation of the universe with a sacrifice. This idea is carried to its fullest extent in the Puruṣasūkta of the Rigveda,³ one of its latest hymns, which has often already been mentioned. The first part of the hymn is a strong expression that the Puruṣa is the universe: the whole of this universe is but a quarter of him, three quarters are immortal; he has a thousand heads, eyes, and feet, and extends ten digits beyond the universe. In comparison with the normal gods he represents the whole of the world, and not one fraction only. The idea of the three stages appears here also: the Virāj springs from Puruṣa, and Puruṣa again from the Virāj, which must denote the waters in their cosmic aspect. The next part of the poem insists that the creation of the universe took the form of a sacrifice at which were present the gods, who could not logically have existed: the offering was a holocaust; from the juice of the burning of the offering sprang the speckled ghee, and from it are derived the animals of the air, the house, and the wild; all the Vedas, Ṛc, Sāman, and Yajus, are assigned to his burning, and further the animals with double incisors and those with a single set. Then by change of idea the four castes⁴ are derived from the cutting up of the body, and again by a further change the gods and the parts of the world are derived from him: the eye gives the sun, the breath the wind, the mind the moon, perhaps because of its clear light which might be compared with mind, the head the heaven, the feet the earth, and the navel the regions between. Time is explained as connected with the means of sacrifice: the rains were the butter, the summer the kindling wood, the autumn the gifts to the priests. The idea is crude and rough and so badly suited to the connexion with its context, that it is difficult not to believe that we have here the adaptation to the needs of a pantheistic view of a primitive and rude legend of the primeval giant, whence the world was born, an idea found in a different form in Norse mythology.¹