Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c8.39

c8.39

**Prajāpati.** We have already seen that the requisites of a *Yajña* are Invocation (*āhvāna*), Fire (Agni), Sacrifice (*āhuti*), and the Altar (*Vedi*) where oblation is offered to fire. At first the altar was a simple structure 1 ut, later, in the *Brāhmaṇa* texts, it is very much elaborated to bring out its underlying spiritual significance. As Eggeling puts it [*SBE*, 43, pp. xiv-xxiv], "in the building of the fire altar, the Brahmans sought to symbolize the constitution of the unity of the universe." As further pointed out by Professor A. B. Keith [*CHI*, i, 142], "in the Purusha hymn of the Rigveda occurs the conception of the creation of the Universe from the Purusha. . . . The Purusha is Prajāpati, 'lord of creatures' and the sacrifice is conceived as constantly recurring in order to maintain the existence of the Universe. To render this possible is the end of the fire altar, the building of which is the reconstruction of the Universe in the shape of Prajāpati. Prajāpati, again, is identified with Agni, the fire of the altar, and both Prajāpati and Agni are the divine counterparts of the human sacrifice. But Prajāpati is himself Time, and Time is in the long run Death, so that the sacrificer himself becomes death, and by that act rises superior to Death and is for ever removed from the world of illusion and trouble to the world of everlasting bliss. In this the true nature of Prajāpati and of the sacrificer is revealed as Intelligence and the Satapatha Brāhmana urges the seeker for truth to meditate upon the Self, made up of Intelligence and endowed with a body of spirit, a form of Light and an ethereal nature."