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

completely5. However. it is. in spite of the comparatively numerous relevant
text-places at our disposal not feasible exactly to trace the development
that led to this re sult in a series of chronologically consecutive passages.
First. because it is impossible to ascertain beyond doubt the precise years
of all relevant texts or even the relative dates of their origin. And in the
second place. because we cannot speak of one homogeneous • gradual process.
of a single regular or 'rectilinear' series of events or stages of development.
The many facts. associations • homologations and so on which
have or may have contribl!ted to the fusion of the personal god on the one
hand and Bráhman-Brahma 6 on the other are too complex and too variabie
to admit of a detailed homogeneous evolutional or really historical description
. As observed earlier. archaic mythologies and systems of categories
and classification meant to organize the perception of the world are not
necessarily free from differences of opinion. disagreement and even contradictions
7. And that all the more when the processes with which the ancient
authorities we re confronted are for the greater part inaccessible to
sense perception and when experiences of something divine are such as
may be attributable to more than one power concept 8.
5 This is of course not to say that we may arbitrarily substitute Brahmä for Prajäpati
when the latter's name is found in a text.· Heiler, op. eit., p. 333 mistakenly
regards Praj~pati's words bhüV, bhuvaV, svaV, out of which arose the
tripartite universe (SB, 11, 1, 6, 3), as Brahmä's, inconsiderately adding that
it was no more than one step from the creative word to the word as the divine
hypostase Bráhman. S. Bhattacharji's (Theogony, p. 155) Prajäpati-Brahman
(KBUp. 2, 9) is based up on a misunderstanding. ,
6 It may be recalled that with regard to its formati~n, brahmán (brahma) is to
bráhman as damán "harness" (RV. 8, 72, 6) to daman "fetter, rope, string", as
sle~mán "sticking, viscous matter, mucus etc." to slé~man "lime, glue, band 11 ,
as dharmán "ruie" to dhárman "established order", etc. The words in -mán (accented
on the suffix) may originally have denoted the idea expressed by the
stem as a 'quality' of a potent being or object (cf. dhvasmán "darkening", bhujmán
"abounding in valleys"). Cf. Gr. Xe:L UWV "wintry , stormy weather, cold
weather, winter" (e.g. Ilias 17,549; ad. 14,522; Herodotus 7, 188) and Xe:Lua
"winter as a season, coId, frost". See also Gonda, Notes on brahman, p. 72 f. ;
E. Benveniste, Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen, Paris 1935,
I, p. 121 ff., esp. p. 124.
7 I cannot agree with Keith, Religion and philosophy, p. 444, who after enumerating
some efforts made in the briihmar;tas "to arise to a principle above and beyond
Prajäpati" says that "there is nothing particular valuable or serious in
these attempts".
8 For a more complete argument see Prajäpati's rise, Introduction and Epilogue.
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