The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s2.21

v2.c39.s2.21

In the Atharvaveda⁹ we find several further efforts to substitute for Prajāpati new names and ideas. In this effort it is certainly difficult to resist the view that the Atharvaveda is out of the main stream of Vedic development: the hymns seem like deliberate efforts to convert into a kind of poetry the philosophical ideas of the Brāhmaṇa period without any real inspiration of any sort. The abstractions Kāla, ‘time’,¹⁰ and Rohita,¹¹ ‘the ruddy one’, probably the sun as the more concrete expression of time, are identified with Prajāpati and praised as all-creating: the ox¹² and the cow, Vaçā,¹³ are also identified with the god, and may to some extent be compared with the view of the Brāhmaṇas, that the sacrifice is Prajāpati. But the Atharvaveda goes farther and in its pseudo-theosophy exalts many other things to the rank of supreme powers, the ladles, the Darbha grass amulet, the porridge cooked for the priest, the bull offered in the sacrifice, the deity Anumati, and possibly others.¹ In two cases a deeper meaning has been seen by Deussen,² who finds in the Skambha hymns³ an effort to find a principle above Prajāpati which supports the whole universe, and in the Ucchiṣṭa⁴ hymn, a glorification of 'what is left over', not, as is normally believed, from the offering, but after all that is empirical has been abstracted from the universe, an idea which he thinks can possibly be reconciled with the normal view by remembrance of the fact that Puruṣa in the sacrifice hymn is said to be only a quarter in the universe, the other three-quarters being beyond it. But it is impossible to take this speculation seriously, and the Skambha hymn has no great claim to be more than a poor piece of theosophical juggling with words, save in so far as it seems to identify Skambha with the Brahman, and as it served as a suggestion for the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad.⁵