The Br[=a]hmanas themselves present no clear picture of creation. All the accounts of a personal creator are based merely on anthropomorphized versions of the text 'desire is the seed.' Praj[=a]pati wishes offspring, and creates. There is, on the other hand, a philosophy of creation which reverts to the tale of the 'golden germ.'[62] The world was at first water; thereon floated a cosmic golden egg (the principle of fire). Out of this came Spirit that desired; and by desire he begat the worlds and all things. It is improbable that in this somewhat Orphic mystery there lies any pre-Vedic myth. The notion comes up first in the golden germ and egg-born bird (sun) of the Rik. It is not specially Aryan, and is found even among the American Indians.[63] It is this Spirit with which the Father-god is identified. But guess-work philosophy then asks what upheld this god, and answers that a support upheld all things. So Support becomes a god in his turn, and, since he must reach through time and space, this Support, Skambha, becomes the All-god also; and to him as to a great divinity the Atharvan sings some of its wildest strains. When once speculation is set going in the Br[=a]hmanas, the result of its travel is to land its followers in intellectual chaos.[64] The gods create the Father-god in one passage, and in another the Father-god creates the gods. The Father creates the waters, whence rises the golden egg. But, again, the waters create the egg, and out of the egg is born the Father. A farrago of contradictions is all that these tales amount to, nor are they redeemed even by a poetical garb.[65]
In the period immediately following the Br[=a]hmanas, or toward the end of the Brahmanic period, as one will, there is a famous distinction made between the gods. Some gods, it is said, are spirit-gods; some are work-gods. They are born of spirit and of works, respectively. The difference, however, is not essential, but functional; so that one may conclude from this authority, the Nirukta (a grammatical and epexigetical work), that all the gods have a like nature; and that the spirit-gods, who are the older, differ only in lack of specific functions from the work-gods. A not uninteresting debate follows this passage in regard to the true nature of the gods. Some people say they are anthropomorphic; others deny this. "And certainly what is seen of the gods is not anthropomorphic; for example, the sun, the earth, etc."[66] In such a period of theological advance it is matter of indifference to which of a group of gods, all essentially one, is laid the task of creation. And, indeed, from the Vedic period until the completed systems of philosophy, all creation to the philosopher is but emanation; and stories of specific acts of creation are not regarded by him as detracting from the creative faculty of the First Cause. The actual creator is for him the factor and agent of the real god. On the other hand, the vulgar worshipper of every era believed only in reproduction on the part of an anthropomorphic god; and that god's own origin he satisfactorily explained by the myth of the golden egg. The view depended in each case not on the age but on the man.
If in these many pages devoted to the Br[=a]hmanas we have produced the impression that the religious literature of this period is a confused jumble, where unite descriptions of ceremonies, formulae, mysticism, superstitions, and all the output of active bigotry; an olla podrida which contains, indeed, odds and ends of sound morality, while it presents, on the whole, a sad view of the latter-day saints, who devoted their lives to making it what it is; we have offered a fairly correct view of the age and its priests, and the rather dreary series of illustrations will not have been collected in vain. We have given, however, no notion at all of the chief object of this class of writings, the liturgical details of the sacrifices themselves. Even a résumé of one comparatively short ceremony would be so long and tedious that the explication of the intricate formalities would scarcely be a sufficient reward. With Hillebrandt's patient analysis of the New-and Full-Moon sacrifice,[67] of which a sketch is given by von Schroeder in his Literatur und Cultur, the curious reader will be able to satisfy himself that a minute description of these ceremonies would do little to further his knowledge of the religion, when once he grasps the fact that the sacrifice is but show. Symbolism without folk-lore, only with the imbecile imaginings of a daft mysticism, is the soul of it; and its outer form is a certain number of formulae, mechanical movements, oblations, and slaughterings.
But we ought not to close the account of the era without giving counter-illustrations of the legendary aspect of this religion; for which purpose we select two of the best-known tales, one from the end of the Br[=a]hmana that is called the [=A]itareya; the other from the beginning of the Çatapatha; the former in abstract, the latter in full.
THE SACRIFICE OF DOGSTAIL ([=A]it. Br. vii. 13).
Hariçcandra, a king born in the great race of Ikshv[=a]ku, had no son. A sage told him what blessings are his who has a son: 'He that has no son has no place in the world; in the person of a son a man is reborn, a second self is begotten.' Then the king desired a son, and the sage instructed him to pray to Varuna for one, and to offer to sacrifice him to the god. This he did, and a son, Rohita, at last was born to him. God Varuna demanded the sacrifice. But the king said: 'He is not fit to be sacrificed, so young as he is; wait till he is ten days old.' The god waited ten days, and demanded the sacrifice. But the king said: 'Wait till his teeth come.' The god waited, and then demanded the sacrifice. But the king said: 'Wait till his teeth fall out'; and when the god had waited, and again demanded the sacrifice, the father said: 'Wait till his new teeth come.' But, when his teeth were come and he was demanded, the father said: 'A warrior is not fit to be sacrificed till he has received his armor' (i.e., until he is knighted). So the god waited till the boy had received his armor, and then he demanded the sacrifice. Thereupon, the king called his son, and said unto him: 'I will sacrifice thee to the god who gave thee to me.' But the son said, 'No, no,' and took his bow and fled into the desert. Then Varuna caused the king to be afflicted with dropsy.[68] When Rohita heard of this he was about to return, but Indra, disguised as a priest, met him, and said: 'Wander on, for the foot of a wanderer is like a flower; his spirit grows, and reaps fruit, and all his sins are forgiven in the fatigue of wandering.'[69] So Rohita, thinking that a priest had commanded him, wandered; and every year, as he would return, Indra met him, and told him still to wander. On one of these occasions Indra inspires him to continue on his journey by telling him that the krita was now auspicious; using the names of dice afterwards applied to the four ages.[70] Finally, after six years, Rohita resolved to purchase a substitute for sacrifice. He meets a starving seer, and offers to buy one of his sons (to serve as sacrifice), the price to be one hundred cows. The seer has three sons, and agrees to the bargain; but "the father said, 'Do not take the oldest,' and the mother said, 'Do not take the youngest,' so Rohita took the middle son, Dogstail." Varuna immediately agrees to this substitution of Dogstail for Rohita, "since a priest is of more value than a warrior."
The sacrifice is made ready, and Viçv[=a]mitra (the Vedic seer) is the officiating priest. But no one would bind the boy to the post. 'If thou wilt give me another hundred cows I will bind him,' says the father of Dogstail. But then no one would kill the boy. 'If thou wilt give me another hundred cows I will kill him,' says the father. The [=A]pri verses[71] are said, and the fire is carried around the boy. He is about to be slain. Then Dogstail prays to 'the first of gods,' the Father-god, for protection. But the Father-god tells him to pray to Agni, 'the nearest of the gods.' Agni sends him to another, and he to another, till at last, when the boy has prayed to all the gods, including the All-gods, his fetters drop off; Hariçcandra's dropsy ceases, and all ends well.[72] Only, when the avaricious father demands his son back, he is refused, and Viçv[=a]mitra adopts the boy, even dispossessing his own protesting sons. For fifty of the latter agree to the exaltation of Dogstail; but fifty revolt, and are cursed by Viçv[=a]mitra, that their sons' sons should become barbarians, the Andhras, Pundras, Çabaras, Pulindas, and M[=u]tibas, savage races (of this time), one of which can be located on the southeast coast. The conclusion, and the matter that follows close on this tale, is significant of the time, and of the priest's authority. For it is said that 'if a king hears this story he is made free of sin,' but he can hear it only from a priest, who is to be rewarded for telling it by a gift of one thousand cows, and other rich goods.
The matter following, to which we have alluded, is the use of sacrificial formulae to defeat the king's foes, the description of a royal inauguration, and, at this ceremony, the oath which the king has to swear ere the priest will anoint him (he is anointed with milk, honey, butter, and water, 'for water is immortality'): "I swear that thou mayst take from me whatever good works I do to the day of my death, together with my life and children, if ever I should do thee harm."[73]
When the priest is secretly told how he may ruin the king by a false invocation at the sacrifice, and the king is made to swear that if ever he hurts the priest the latter may rob him of earthly and heavenly felicity, the respective positions of the two, and the contrast between this era and that of the early hymns, become strikingly evident. It is not from such an age as this that one can explain the spirit of the Rig Veda.
The next selection is the famous story of the flood, which we translate literally in its older form.[74] The object of the legend in the Br[=a]hmana is to explain the importance of the Id[=a] (or Il[=a]) ceremony, which is identified with Id[=a], Manu's daughter.