Prajapati- Hindu PrimordialPrimordial"Lord of Creatures"

The First Desire

In the beginning, Prajapati was alone. He desired to become many. He generated creative heat through intense concentration, and from this heat the universe began to emerge. The Shatapatha Brahmana describes what followed: from his breath came the winds, from his eye the sun. Each act of emission drew upon his own being. After creating, Prajapati fell apart. His joints loosened. His limbs separated. The creator was broken by his own creation.

The gods he had emitted recognized that their father had exhausted himself in bringing them forth. To restore him, they performed the first sacrifice, ritually reassembling Prajapati's scattered body. The fire altar, built in the shape of a bird with 10,800 bricks corresponding to the moments of the cosmic year, was understood as the literal reconstruction of his body. Every Vedic ritual that followed reenacted this restoration.

The Golden Egg

The Rigveda's Hiranyagarbha Sukta describes a golden egg floating on primordial waters before creation. Prajapati gestated within it for the span of a cosmic year. When the egg split, its two halves became heaven and earth, its fluid the rivers and oceans.

Each verse of the hymn ends with the refrain "kasmai devaya havisha vidhema": to which god shall we offer our oblation? The later tradition read this "Ka" ("Who?") as a name for Prajapati himself, the god so beyond naming he could only be invoked as a question.

The Pursuit of Ushas

Prajapati generated his daughter Ushas, the Dawn, as part of his creative work. Then desire seized him. He pursued her. She fled, taking the form of a doe. He followed as a stag.

The gods gathered their most fearsome aspects into a single being: Rudra, the howling archer. Rudra shot Prajapati with an arrow and halted his pursuit. The arrow remains in the sky as the constellation Mrigashira, the deer's head.

Indra's Three Returns

In the Chandogya Upanishad, Prajapati offered to teach the nature of the Self to any student who came. Two arrived: Indra, king of the gods, and the asura Virochana. Both studied for thirty-two years. Prajapati told them: "The being you see reflected in water or in a mirror, that is the Self."

Virochana was satisfied. He returned to the asuras and taught them that the body is the Self.

Indra left, then turned back. A body grows old. A body dies. This could not be the Self. He returned to Prajapati and studied for another thirty-two years. Prajapati said: "The one who moves freely in dreams, that is the Self." Indra left again, then turned back once more. A dreamer feels fear and pain. He returned for another thirty-two years. Prajapati said: "The one in deep sleep, free from desire and dream, that is the Self." Still Indra was unsatisfied: in deep sleep, one knows nothing at all.

After a final five years, Prajapati gave the last teaching. The Self is pure awareness, beyond waking, dream, and sleep. Indra had studied for a hundred and one years to hear it.