Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/270

 first promulgated, goats and sheep were forbidden food.

Turning from the Vedas to the Brahmanas, we find a curiously savage myth of the origin of species. According to this passage of the Brahmana, "this universe was formerly soul only, in the form of Purusha." He caused himself to fall asunder into two parts. Thence arose a husband and a wife. "He cohabited with her; from them men were born. She reflected, 'How does he, after having produced me from himself, cohabit with 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 bestial form of Zeus, Nemesis, Cronus, Demeter, and other gods and goddesses. In the Brahmanas this myth is a explanation of the origin of species, and such an explanation as could scarcely have occurred to a civilised mind. In other myths in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates men from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes a man (purusha), with similar examples of speculation.