Myth, Ritual and Religion

made out of fragments of a man — Discussion of this hymn — Absurdities of Brahmanas — Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat — Evolut

nd their violent separation as displayed in the tales of Greeks and Maoris, to which may be added the Acagchemem nation in California.1 Another feature of savage cosmogonies, illustrated especially in some early Slavonic myths, in Australian legends, and in the faith of the American races, was the creation of the world, or the recovery of a drowned world by animals, as the raven, the dove and the coyote. The hatching of all thi

Puranas contain a large store of various cosmogonic traditions as inconsistent as the parallel myths of savages. We have an Aryan Ilmarinen, Tvashtri, who, like the Finnish smith, forged “the iron vault of hollow heaven” and the ball of earth.3 Again, the earth is said to have sprung, as in some Mangaian fables, “from a being calle

able water. That One which lay void and wrapped in nothingness was developed by the power of fervour. Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind (and which) sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects entity with non-entity. The ray (or cord) which stretched across these (worlds), was it below or was it above? There were there impregnating po

y refer, as Dr. Muir suggests, to the father, heaven above, and the mother, earth beneath. The “bond between entity and non-entity” is sought in a favourite idea of the Indian philosophers, that of tapas or “fervour”. The o

philosophy. But the date cannot be ascertained. Mr. Max Muller cannot go farther than the suggestion that the hymn is an expression of the perennis quaedam philosophia of Leibnitz. We are also warned that a hymn is not necessarily modern because it is philosophical.7 Certainly that is true; the Zunis, Maoris, and Mangaians exhibit amazing powers of abstract thought. We are not concerned to show that

cuts in twain the magnified non-natural woman Omorca, and converts the halves of her body into heaven and earth. Among the Iroquois in North America, Chokanipok was the giant whose limbs, bones and blood furnished the raw material of many natural objects; while in Mangaia portions of Ru, in Egypt of Set and Osiris, in Greece of Dionysus Zagreus were used in creating various things, such as stones, plants and metals. The same ideas precisely are found in the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda. Yet it is a singular thing that, in all the discussions as to the antiquity and significance of this hymn which have come under our notice, there has not been one single reference made to parallel legends a

er. It formed those aerial (creatures) and animals both wild and tame. From that universal sacrifice sprang the Ric and Saman verses, the metres and Yajush. From it sprang horses, and all animals with two rows of teeth; kine sprang from it; from it goats and sheep. When (the gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut him up? What was his mouth? What arms (had he)? What (two objects) are said (to have been) his thighs and feet? The Brahman was his mouth; the Rajanya was made his arms; the being (called) the Vaisya, he was his thighs; the Sudra sprang from his feet. The moo

nd in its diction,” and this opinion he supports by philological arguments. Dr. Muir10 says that the hymn “has every character of modernness both in its diction and ideas”. Dr Haug, on the other hand,11 in a paper read in 1871, admits that the present form of the hymn is not older than the greater part of the hymns of the tenth book, and than those of the Atharva Veda; but he adds, “The ideas which the hymn contains are certainly of a primeval antiquity. . . . In fact, the hymn is found in the Yajur-Veda among the formulas connected with human sacrifices, which were formerly practised in India.” We have expressly declined to speak about “primeval antiquity,” as we have scarcely any evidence as to the myths and mental condition for example, even of palaeolithic man; but we may so far agree with Dr. Haug as

ution of caste a myth which had already explained the origin of the sun, the firmament, animals, and so forth, on the usual lines of savage thought. The Purusha Sukta is the type of many other Indian myths of creation, of which the following13 one is extremely noteworthy. “Prajapati desired to propagate. He formed the Trivrit (stoma) from his mouth. After it were produced the deity Agni, the metre Gayatri, . . . of men the Brahman, of beasts the goat; . . . from his breast, and from his arms he formed the Panchadasa (stoma). After it were created the God Indra, the Trishtubh metre, . . . of men the Rajanya, of beasts the sheep. Hence they are vigorous,

h me? Ah, let me disappear.’ She became a cow, and the other a bull, and he cohabited with her. From them kine were produced.” After a series of similar metamorphoses of the female into all animal shapes, and a similar series of pursuits by the male in appropriate form, “in this manner pairs of all sorts of creatures down to ants were created”. This myth is a parallel to the various Greek legends about the amours in b

in the atmosphere” (Indra), towards a conception of deity, “the farther step would be taken of speaking of the deity under such new names as Visvakarman and Prajapati”. These are “appellatives which do not designate any limited functions connected with any single department of Nature, but the more general and abstract notions of divine power operating in the production and government of the universe”. Now the interesting point is that round this new and abstract NAME gravitate the most savage and crudest myths, exactly the m

vage myths — for example, in that of the Navajoes — that the earth was at first very small, a mere patch, and grew bigger after the animal fished it up. “Formerly this earth was only so large, of the size of a span. A boar called Emusha raised her up.” Here the boar makes no pretence of being the incarnation of a god, but is a mere boar sans phrase, like the creative coyote of the Papogas and Chinooks, or the musk-rat of the Tacullies. This is a good example of the development of myths. Savages begin, as we saw, by mythically regarding various animals, spiders, grasshoppers, ravens, eagles, cockatoos, as the creators or recoverers of the world. As civilisation advances, those animals st

rvival of the fittest was otherwise expressed. The gods made several attempts at creation, and each set of created beings proving in one way or other unsuited to its environment, was permitted to die out or degenerated into apes, and was succeeded by a set better adapted for survival.23 In much the same way the Satapatha Brahmana24 represents mammals as the last result of a series of creative experiments. “Prajap

aters desired: ‘How can we be reproduced?’ So saying, they toiled, they performed austerity. While they were performing austerity, a golden egg came into existence. It then became a year. . . . From it in a year a man ca

passage of the Aitareya Brahmana, however, retains the old conception, in which there was nothing metaphorical at all.29 These two worlds, heaven and earth, were once joined. Subsequently they were separated (according to one account, by Indra, who thus plays the part of Cronus and of Tane Mahuta). “Heaven and earth,” says Dr. Muir, “are regarded as the parents not only of men, but of the gods also, as appears from the various texts where they are designated by the epithet Devapatre, ‘having gods for their children’.” By men in an early stage of thought this myth was accepted along with others in which heaven and earth were regarded as objects created by one o