nd so forth. In Chaldean
story, Bel cuts in twain the magnified non-natural woman Omorca,
and converts the halves of her body into heaven and earth. Among the
Iroquois in North America, Chokanipok was the giant whose limbs, bones
and blood furnished the raw material of many natural objects; while
in Mangaia portions of Ru, in Egypt of Set and Osiris, in Greece of
Dionysus Zagreus were used in creating various things, such as stones,
plants and metals. The same ideas precisely are found in the ninetieth
hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda. Yet it is a singular thing that,
in all the discussions as to the antiquity and significance of this
hymn which have come under our notice, there has not been one single
reference made to parallel legends among Aryan or non-Aryan peoples. In
accordance with the general principles which guide us in this work, we
are inclined to regard any ideas which are at once rude in character
and widely distributed, both among civilised and uncivilised races, as
extremely old, whatever may be the age of the literary form in which
they are presented. But the current of learned opinions as to the date
of the Purusha Sukta, the Vedic hymn about the sacrifice of Purusha
and the creation of the world out of fragments of his body, runs in the
opposite direction. The hymn is not regarded as very ancient by most
Sanskrit scholars. We shall now quote the hymn, which contains the data
on which any theory as to its age must be founded:--(1)

(1) Rig-Veda, x. 90; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 9.

"Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. On
every side enveloping the earth, he overpassed (it) by a space of ten
fingers. Purusha himself is this whole (universe), whatever is and
whatever shall be.... When the gods performed a sacrifice with Purusha
as the oblation, the spring was its butter, the summer its fuel, and the
autumn its (accompanying) offering. This victim, Purusha, born in the
beginning, they immolated on the sacrificial grass. With him the gods,
the Sadhyas, and the Rishis sacrificed. From that universal sacrifice
were provided curds and butter. It formed those aerial (creatures) and
animals both wild and tame. From that universal sacrifice sprang the Ric
and Saman verses, the metres and Yajush. From it sprang horses, and all
animals with two rows of teeth; kine sprang from it; from it goats and
sheep. When (the gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut