Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/145

 in several primitive mythologies. But the manner in which the idea is here worked out is sufficiently late. Quite in the spirit of the Brāhmaṇas, where Vishṇu is identified with the sacrifice, the act of creation is treated as a sacrificial rite, the original man being conceived as a victim, the parts of which when cut up become portions of the universe. His head, we are told, became the sky, his navel the air, his feet the earth, while from his mind sprang the moon, from his eye the sun, from his breath the wind. "Thus they (the gods) fashioned the worlds." Another sign of the lateness of the hymn is its pantheistic colouring; for it is here said that "Purusha is all this world, what has been and shall be," and "one-fourth of him is all creatures, and three-fourths are the world of the immortals in heaven." In the Brāhmaṇas, Purusha is the same as the creator, Prajāpati, and in the Upanishads he is identified with the universe. Still later, in the dualistic Sānkhya philosophy, Purusha becomes the name of "soul" as opposed to "matter." In the Hymn of Man a being called Virāj is mentioned as produced from Purusha. This in the later Vedānta philosophy is a name of the personal creator as contrasted with Brahma, the universal soul. The Purusha hymn, then, may be regarded as the oldest product of the pantheistic literature of India. It is at the same time one of the very latest poems of the Rigvedic age; for it presupposes a knowledge of the three oldest Vedas, to which it refers together by name. It also for the first and only time in the Rigveda mentions the four castes; for it is here said that Purusha's mouth became the Brahman, his arms the Rājanya (warrior), his thighs the Vaiçya (agriculturist), and his feet the Çūdra (serf).

In nearly all the other poems dealing with the origin