Prajapati's relations with Brahman, Brhaspati and Brahma - DWC

is Bráhman (sarvam hy etad brahma), this ätman is Bráhman; this ätman
has four q uarters (catu~pät)"; for speech, breath and the faculties of seeing
and hearing as Bráhman's four parts or quarters (päda) see ChU. 3,
18, 3 ff.; for the Bráhman cup with four whorls MaiU. 6, 28; 6, 38. The
one god (deva~) who in ChU. 4, 3, 6 is said to have swallowed up the great
ones probably is Bráhman 32, although he has also been taken to be Prajäpati
33 •
As argued elsewhere 3 '+, the number 16 was, in Indian antiquity, often
characteristic of a, or the, totality, of the universe , the complete All.
Hence there are some texts which unmistakably attest to the existence of
a belief in a more or less regular relation bet ween Prajäpati and this number.
According to JUB. 1, 15, 1, 2 ff. the god, being alone in the beginning
, changed his state so as to become 16fold; according to BÄ U. 1, 5,
14 Prajäpati the year consists of 16 constituent parts. This conception of
the 16fold Prajäpati 35 has presumably exerted influence on the doctrine of
the 16fold Bráhman - which is sarvam, ChU. 3,14,3 etc. - in ChU. 4, 5-
9, where not only the principal directions of the universe are declared to
be parts of Bráhman, but also earth, atmosphere, sky, ocean; fire, sun,
moon, lightning; and breath, visual faculty, hearing and manas 36. Those
who promulgated this doctrine were obviously under constraint to form
four groups of four elements each.
In A VS. 4, 35 37 - a text that according to Raus. 66, 11 must be used in
a ceremony for escaping death - Prajäpati appears (st. 1) as a mythical
originator, whose activity is until the present day replete with salutary
power: "Let me overcome death by means of the rice-mess which Prajäpati
... cooked (imperfect) with productive heat (tapasä) for the embodiment
of Bráhman (brahmá1)e)". In the following stanzas this rice-dish is described
as having sustained the all-nourishing earth, established the sky
(3), furnishing the materials from which the year was made (4), as being
the origin of continuance of life (amrtam) and as containing the Vedas.
Interestingly enough, in st. 2 it is Bráhman of old (or, formerly, purvam)
who has cooked (perfect) the same dish for the same purpose . Are prajäpati
and Bráhman the same person? Or is the alternation bet ween the two
verb forms - as it usually is in the hymns of the ~gveda - motivated, and
does the perfect here also, as often elsewhere, express a state, a permanent
situation and does the imperfect here also refer to an event in the
mythical past? 38 If so - and why not? - does the author refer to Bráhman
as a subject that was already cooking before Prajäpati and to Prajäpati as
a god who, after Bráhman 's example, as a true originator (once) cooked
32 See, e.g., the note by E. Senart, Chändogya-Upani!?ad, Paris 1930, p. 49.
33 See S. Radhakrishnan, The principal upani!?ads, London 1953, p. 405. - Compare
also the observations made on the fourth priest, the brahmán, in AiB. 5,
34,3; KB. 6, 11; SB. 11,5,8,7 etc. (See H.W. Bodewitz, in Selected studies
on ritual, Vol. D.J. Hoens, Supplement to Numen 45, Leiden 1983, p. 33 ff.).
34 Gonda, Change and continuity, ch. IV; to the bibliographical notes may be
added M. Collins, The octaval system of reckoning in India, Dravidian Studies
4, Madras Univ. 1926,
35 Cf. also JB. 1, 205 and SS. 9, 5, l.
36 See also H. Lüders, Zu den Upani!?ads, 11, SitzBer. Berlin, Ph.-h. Kl. 1922, p.
243 ff. (= Philologica Indica, Göttingen 1940, p. 509 ff. , esp. p. 522 ff. ) .
37 I refer to Gonda, Savayajfias, p. 96 f., 281 ff.; for brahmá~e see p. 282.
38 See J. Gonda, Old Indian, Leiden 1971, p. 128 ff.
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