the Jagati
metre,... of men the Vaisya, of beasts kine. Hence they are to be eaten,
because they were created from the receptacle of food." The form in
which we receive this myth is obviously later than the institution of
caste and the technical names for metres. Yet surely any statement that
kine "are to be eaten" must be older than the universal prohibition to
eat that sacred animal the cow. Possibly we might argue that when this
theory of creation was first promulgated, goats and sheep were forbidden
food.(2)

(1) Taittirya Sanhita, or Yajur-Veda, vii. i. 1-4; Muir, 2nd edit., i.
15.

(2) Mr. M'Lennan has drawn some singular inferences from this passage,
connecting, as it does, certain gods and certain classes of men with
certain animals, in a manner somewhat suggestive of totemism (Fornightly
Review), February, 1870.

Turning from the Vedas to the Brahmanas, we find a curiously savage myth
of the origin of species.(1) According to this passage of the Brahmana,
"this universe was formerly soul only, in the form of Purusha". He
caused himself to fall asunder into two parts. Thence arose a husband
and a wife. "He cohabited with her; from them men were born. She
reflected, 'How does he, after having produced me from himself, cohabit
with me? Ah, let me disappear.' She became a cow, and the other a bull,
and he cohabited with her. From them kine were produced." After a series
of similar metamorphoses of the female into all animal shapes, and a
similar series of pursuits by the male in appropriate form, "in this
manner pairs of all sorts of creatures down to ants were created". This
myth is a parallel to the various Greek legends about the amours in
bestial form of Zeus, Nemesis, Cronus, Demeter and other gods and
goddesses. In the Brahmanas this myth is an explanation of the origin
of species, and such an explanation as could scarcely have occurred to
a civilised mind. In other myths in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates men
from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise,
the tortoise becomes a man (purusha), with similar examples of
speculation.(2)

(1) Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 4, 2; Muir, 2nd edit., i. 25.

(2) Similar tales are found among the Khonds.

Among all these Brahmana myths of the part taken by Prajapati in the
creation or evoking of things, the question arises who WAS Prajapati?
His role is that of the great Hare in American myth; he is a kind of
demiurge, and his name means