Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 6 (Indian and Iranian).djvu/110

74 centuries with only so much change as has proved unavoidable in the development of creed during hundreds of years.

The essential feature of Prajāpati is that he is a creator, a "Lord of Offspring," and offspring includes everything. Yet there is no consistent account of creation in the Brāhmaṇas, nor even in any one text. Nevertheless, the importance of the concept Prajāpati does appear in the fact that he is definitely identified with Viśvakarman, the "All-Creator" of the Ṛgveda (x. 81, 82), or with Dakṣa, who is at once son and father of Aditi in that Saṁhitā (x. 72); and the later Saṁhitās repeat the hymn of the Ṛgveda (x. 121) which celebrates the "Golden Germ," Hiraṇyagarbha, and identify with Prajāpati the interrogative Ka ("Who"), which in that hymn heads each line in the question, "To what god shall we offer with oblation?" Among the variants of the story of the creation of the world there is one which becomes a favourite and which assigns to the waters or the ocean the first place in the order of existence. The waters, however, desire to be multiplied, and produce a golden egg by the process of tapas, a term which, with its origin in the verb tap, "heat," shows that the first conception of Indian ascetic austerity centres in the process of producing intense physical heat. From this egg is born Prajāpati, who proceeds to speak in a year, the words which he utters being the sacred vyāhṛtis, or exclamations, "Bhūḥ," "Bhuvaḥ," and "Svar," which become the earth, the atmosphere, and the sky. He desired offspring and finally produced the gods, who were made divinities by reaching the sky; and he also created the Asuras, whereby came the darkness, which revealed to Prajāpati that he had created evil, so that he pierced the Asuras with darkness, and they were overcome. The tale, one of many, is important in that it reveals qualities which are permanent throughout Indian religion: the story of creation is variously altered from time to time and made to accord with philosophical speculation, which resolves the waters into a primitive material termed Prakṛti; but the golden egg,