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76 Uṣas ("Dawn"). The gods were deeply indignant at this deed, and Rudra either threatened to shoot him, but was induced to desist by being promised to be made lord of cattle; or actually shot him, though afterward the wound thus caused was healed. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa (iii. 33) the story takes a very mythic aspect: Prajāpati turns himself into a deer to pursue his daughter in the guise of an antelope (rohiṇī), and the gods produce a most terrible form to punish him, in the shape, it is clear, of Rudra, though his name is too dangerous to be mentioned; he pierces Prajāpati, who flees to the sky and there constitutes the constellation Mṛga ("Wild Animal"), while the archer becomes Mṛgavyādha ("Piercer of the Mṛga"), the antelope is changed into Rohiṇī, and the arrow is still to be seen as the constellation of the three-pronged arrow.

Despite his creative activity, Prajāpati was not immortal by birth, for the conception of the Brāhmaṇas, as of India in later days, does not admit of immortality won by birth alone. When he had created gods and men, he formed death; and half of himself—hair, skin, flesh, bone, and marrow—was mortal, the other half—mind, voice, breath, eye, and ear—being immortal. He fled in terror of death, and it was only by means of the earth and the waters, united as a brick for the piling of the sacred fire which forms one of the main ceremonies of the sacrificial ritual, that he could be made immortal. But at the same time Prajāpati himself is the year, the symbol of time, and by the year he wears out the lives of mortals, whether men or gods. The gods, on the contrary, attained immortality from Prajāpati; they sought in vain to do so by many sacrifices, but failed, even when they performed the piling of the fire altar with an undefined number of fire-bricks, until at last they won their desire when they followed the proper numbers of the bricks. Death, however, objected to this exemption from his control, for it left him without a portion; and the gods, therefore, ordained that thenceforth no man should become immortal without parting with his body, whether his immor-