The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.s2.1

v2.c41.s2.1

H. Güntert¹ has traced the common possession over an area extending from Germany, through the Thraco-Phrygian area, to the Indo-Iranians of a number of mythological elements, which are preserved for us in complex and contaminated forms in the religious records of these peoples. The first of these ideas is that of the origin of mankind and the world from the sacrifice of a primeval being, an idea suggested by the great potency which primitive religious thought ascribes to the bloody sacrifice.² This is preserved for us in the legend of the sacrifice of Puruṣa and of Ymir, whose original character he strongly defends against suggestion of Christian influence; it is reflected also in the strange, though late, legend of Odin who records how for nine nights he hung on a tree, wounded by the spear, dedicated to Odin, himself to himself. The action of the god in permitting himself to be sacrificed is one of free will, motived by the desire to create the world and establish the race of men. Yama, he holds, is such a god; the difficult passage of the Rigveda, x. 13. 4, he explains as a reference to a deliberate decision by Yama to sacrifice himself for the sake of mankind; it is as a sacrificer of himself that Yama performs the feat of finding the hidden Agni,³ who is the mediator in the sacrifice between the offerer and the gods. Later we find in Iran the conception of some sin in the primitive being, as in Yima, and, when the human sacrifice became antiquated, the creator as in the legend of Mithra slays a bull, not a human being.⁴