Prajapati

“ His son moved before him, beautiful exceedingly, perfect in duty not only to his father and his foster-mother, Prajapati the fair and noble, but also to all with whom he had to do, quick to smile and reply, glad in a boy’s sports and games, and yet—apart. As a man, looking down through the clear crystal of a lake, may behold beneath it groves of strange leafage where silver fish dart and disappear in a life unknown to him, so the Maharaja, looking through the translucence of his son’s eyes uplifted to his, knew that they revealed yet hid a world in which he had no part. ”

“ And when on the morrow these dreams were told to Prajapati, she rejoiced with them, no thought of envy to cloud the crystal of her soul. And when they were laid before the dream-readers, they could presage nothing but good, and being called in before the Maharaja where he sat in state with his Maharanis, they spoke as follows:
“A lord of men shall be born, a great and awful ruler. Let the soul of the Maharaja be exalted, and the heart of the Maharani rejoice and triumph, since to their house is given a son whose kingdom is the earth and the fullness of it.” ”

“ By giving away a bull of blue complexion, that is full-grown in respect of years and adorned with every ornament, the giver attains to the regions of the Gandharvas and the Apsaras. By giving away a cow with the flesh of her throat hanging down, and adorned with every ornament, the giver, freed from every grief, attains to those regions that belong to Prajapati himself. That man, O king, who habitually makes gifts of kine, proceeds, piercing through the clouds, on a car of solar effulgence to Heaven and shines there in splendour. ”

“ So the Maharaja, receiving him in his arms, blessed his son, rejoicing in his happy fate who was the father of such a one as the world could not show the like. And in his ears the voices of prophecy made a changing music of pride and triumph. And the Maharani, overweighted with gladness, like a lily surcharged with dew, was borne to her noble couch of ivory and gold; and Prajapati watched each breath she drew, so great were her love and fear. ”

“ Prajapati becomes the great mythical hero, and inherits the wildest myths of the savage heroic beasts and birds.
The priests are now Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who possess all the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and sacrificial minutiae. As life in the opera is a series of songs, so life in the Brahmanas is a sequence of sacrifices. Sacrifice makes the sun rise and set, and the rivers run this way or that. ”

“ From it in a year a man came into existence, who was Prajapati. . . . He conceived progeny in himself; with his mouth he created the gods." According to another text, [26] "Prajapati took the form of a tortoise." The tortoise is the same as Aditya. [27]
It is now time to examine the Aryan shape of the widely spread myth about the marriage of heaven and earth, and the fortunes of their children. We have already seen that in New Zealand heaven and earth were regarded as real persons, of bodily parts and passions, united in a secular embrace. ”

“ Indra departed but was again disturbed with doubts, and was afraid and came back and said "that though the dream self does not become blind when the body is blind, or injured in one eye when the body is so injured and is not affected by its defects, and is not killed by its destruction, but yet it is as if it was overwhelmed, as if it suffered and as if it wept—in this I see no good." Prajâpati gave a still higher instruction: "When a man, fast asleep, in total contentment, does not know any dreams, this is the self, this is the deathless, the fearless, this is Brahman." ”

“ The whole teaching of Prajâpati, he says, refers to the individual Soul only. Indra having heard that Prajâpati had spoken about a Self free from sin, old age, &c., the enquiry into which enables the soul to obtain all worlds and desires, approaches Prajâpati with the wish to learn the true nature of that Self which should be enquired into. ”

“ The general drift of thought is essentially pantheistic, but it is far from being reduced to a regular system, and the ancient form of belief still enters largely into it. The attributes of Prajāpati, in the same way, have in them elements of a purely polytheistic nature, and some of the attempts at reconciling this new-fangled deity with the traditional belief are somewhat awkward. An ancient classification of the gods represented them as being thirty-three in number, eleven in each of the three worlds or regions of nature. ”

“ He, therefore, that wishes to earn that high merit which has existed from ancient days, should worship and adore his preceptors and cheerfully share with them every object of enjoyment. With him who pleases his father is pleased Prajapati himself. He who pleases his mother gratifies the earth herself. He who pleases his preceptor gratifies Brahma by his act. For this reason, the preceptor is worthy of greater reverence than either the father or the mother. If preceptors are worshipped, the very Rishis, and the gods, together with the Pitris, are all pleased. ”

“ With soul cleansed from all sorts of evil by sacrifices and other religious rites, he ruled the Earth like Indra ruling the Heaven. The illustrious king performed a great Horse-sacrifice in which his preceptor Vrihaspati became the Hota. The sons of Prajapati (Brahman) themselves, viz., Ekata, Dwita, and Trita, became the Sadasyas in that sacrifice. ”

“ All that springs from them dissolves, when the time comes, in those very five great elements like billows in the ocean. All the great elements are beyond those elements that compose the universe. He that is released from those five elements goes to the highest goal. The puissant Prajapati created all this by the mind only. After the same manner Rishis attained to the status of deities by the aid of penance. After the same manner, those who have achieved perfection, who were capable of the concentration of Yoga, and who subsist on fruits and roots, likewise perceive the triple world by penance. ”

“ It is held to imply no more than that the sun destroys the darkness and sinks at evening into the twilight from whence he sprung.
Max Müller, in his "History of Sanscrit Literature," points out that similar meanings clearly underlie the Vedic myths. He says:
"It is fabled that Prajâpati, the Lord of Creation, did violence to his daughter. But what does it mean? Prajâpati, the Lord of Creation, is the name of the sun; and he is called so because he protects all creatures. His daughter Ushas is the dawn. ”

“ The place of the more personal Prajāpati is taken in the Upanishads by the Ātman as a creative power. Thus the Bṛihadāraṇyaka (I. iv.) relates that in the beginning the Ātman or the Brahma was this universe. It was afraid in its loneliness and felt no pleasure. Desiring a second being, it became man and woman, whence the human race was produced. It then proceeded to produce male and female animals in a similar way; finally creating water, fire, the gods, and so forth. ”

“ Hence a myth has arisen that in order to punish Prajāpati for his incest with his daughter the gods created Bhūta-pati (who is Paśu-pati or Rudra under a new name) , who stabbed him. The rest of the myth is as immaterial to our purpose as it is unsavoury; what is important is that the conscience of the Brahmans was beginning to feel slight qualms at the uncleanness of some of their old myths and to look towards Rudra as in some degree an avenger of sin. In this is implied an immense moral advance. Henceforth there will be a gradual ennoblement of one of the phases of the god's character. ”

“ The reflected Self, on the other hand, is not spoken of as he who is characterised by the eye (the seer within the eye) , for that would render Prajâpati obnoxious to the reproach of saying deceitful things.—So also, in the second section, the passage, 'He who moves about happy in dreams,' &c. ”

“ What god should we with sacrifices worship? The fourth line here is the refrain of nine successive stanzas, in which the creator is referred to as unknown, with the interrogative pronoun ka, "what?" This ka in the later Vedic literature came to be employed not only as an epithet of the creator Prajāpati, but even as an independent name of the supreme god.
A deity of an abstract character occurring in the oldest as well as the latest parts of the Rigveda is Bṛihaspati, "Lord of Prayer." Roth and other distinguished Vedic scholars regard him as a direct personification of devotion. ”

“ Prajâpati thereupon, wishing to test the capacity of his pupil for receiving true instruction, gives him successive information about the embodied soul in the state of waking, dream and dreamless sleep. When he finds that Indra sees no good in instruction of this kind and thus shows himself fit to receive instruction about the true nature of the disembodied Self, he explains to him that the body is a mere abode for a ruling Self; that that bodiless Self is essentially immortal ”

“ Āpastamba closes his exposition of them with a remark that upsets the whole theory: ‘There is no reason to place one Āsrama before another.’ [24] And just before that he quotes a saying of Prajāpati from which it follows that those who become Bhikshus do not gain salvation at all, ‘they become dust and perish.’
This was no doubt the real inmost opinion of the more narrow-minded of the priests. But the first maker of the phrase did not quite like to put this forward in his own name—the idea of the Bhikshu as a man worthy of special esteem had already become too strong for that. ”

“ In the Brâhma@nas, however, we find that the cosmogonic view generally requires the agency of a creator, who is not however always the starting point, and we find that the theory of evolution is combined with the theory of creation, so that Prajâpati is sometimes spoken of as the creator while at other times the creator is said to have floated in the primeval water as a cosmic golden egg. ”

“ The Prajâpatis of the First Manvantara become the Rishis of other Manvantaras. As the first Lords of creation bring back the life energies as well as the lost experiences of the previous Kalpa, so the Rishis bring back the lost knowledge of each Manvantara. This is fully explained in the fourteenth Chapter of the Eighth Skandha. The Kumârs are not Prajâpatis, as they come from a plane higher than Mahar Loka. In the first Manvantara, Marichî, Atrî Angirasa, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, Bhrigu, Vasistha, Daksha, and Nârada are mentioned as the chief Prajâpatis. ”

“ After a great deal of yea and nay, the king and queen at last consented to the proposal. The party came to the outskirts of the weaver's village; the palki bearers were sent away; and the princess, who asked where her husband's palace was, was made to walk on foot. The weaver's hut was soon reached, and the jackal, addressing the princess, said, "This, madam, is your husband's palace." The princess began to beat her forehead with the palms of her hands in sheer despair. "Ah, me! is this the husband whom Prajapati [2] intended for me? Death would have been a thousand times better." ”

“ The tendency towards a comprehension of the unity of the divine essence had resulted in some minds, as has been remarked before, in a kind of monotheistic notion of the origin of the universe. In the literature of the Brāhmaṇa period we meet with this conception as a common element of speculation; and so far from its being considered incompatible with the existence of a universal spirit, Prajāpati, the personal creator of the world, is generally allowed a prominent place in the pantheistic theories. Yet the state of theological speculation, reflected in these writings, is one of transition. ”

“ We have noticed that during the closing period of the Sa@mhitâ there were people who had risen to the conception of a single creator and controller of the universe, variously called Prajâpati, Vis'vakarman, Puru@sa, Brahma@naspati and Brahman. But this divine controller was yet only a deity. The search as to the nature of this deity began in the Upani@sads. Many visible objects of nature such as the sun or the wind on one hand and the various psychological functions in man were tried, but none could render satisfaction to the great ideal that had been aroused. ”

“ Upon death, men go to Bhuvar Loka, where they become Bhûtas, Pretas and Pisâchas. Then they go to Svar Loka, where they become Devas, not the Devas of Deva creations but only temporary Devas. When their merits are exhausted, they come down upon earth, to begin life as men again. But if by unselfish Karma and devotion, men pass across the limits of the triple plane, they go first to Mahar Loka. Here they are called Prajâpatis. Bhrigu and other Prajâpatis who are the ordinary dwellers of Mahar Loka, are described in one sloka of Bhâgavata, as bearing the life period of one Kalpa. ”

“ Diverse gems from Jamvudwipa are used there. In all these islands, O king, Brahmacharya, truth, and self-control of the dwellers, as also their health and periods of life, are in the ratio of one to two as the islands are more and more remote (northwards) . O king, the land in those islands, O Bharata, comprises but one country, for that is said to be one country in which one religion is met with. The Supreme Prajapati himself, upraising the rod of chastisement, always dwelleth there, protecting those islands. He, O monarch, is the king. He is their source of bliss. ”

“ Brahmâ took up the creation, which was two-fold — direct or Mânasa and indirect or through Prajâpatis and Manu. The creation or bringing into manifestation of those that had been preserved at Pralaya is direct or Mânasa. The mind born sons of Brahmâ took up positions in the universe of duty and responsibility and in this Kalpa they have not to look to themselves, but to others. Their own evolution is not a matter of their concern. The innumerable Monads were created through Manu and the real history of the Kalpa is the history of their evolution. ”