"The Master of Things Created," like
the Australian Biamban, "Master," and the American title of the chief
Manitou, "Master of Life",(1) Dr. Muir remarks that, as the Vedic
mind advances from mere divine beings who "reside and operate in fire"
(Agni), "dwell and shine in the sun" (Surya), or "in the atmosphere"
(Indra), towards a conception of deity, "the farther step would be
taken of speaking of the deity under such new names as Visvakarman and
Prajapati". These are "appellatives which do not designate any limited
functions connected with any single department of Nature, but the more
general and abstract notions of divine power operating in the production
and government of the universe". Now the interesting point is that round
this new and abstract NAME gravitate the most savage and crudest myths,
exactly the myths we meet among Hottentots and Nootkas. For example,
among the Hottentots it is Heitsi Eibib, among the Huarochiri Indians
it is Uiracocha, who confers, by curse or blessing, on the animals their
proper attributes and characteristics.(2) In the Satapatha Brahmana it
is Prajapati who takes this part, that falls to rude culture-heroes of
Hottentots and Huarochiris.(3) How Prajapati made experiments in a kind
of state-aided evolution, so to speak, or evolution superintended and
assisted from above, will presently be set forth.

(1) Bergaigne, iii. 40.

(2) Avila, Fables of the Yncas, p. 127.

(3) English translation, ii. 361.

In the Puranas creation is a process renewed after each kalpa, or vast
mundane period. Brahma awakes from his slumber, and finds the world a
waste of water. Then, just as in the American myths of the coyote, and
the Slavonic myths of the devil and the doves, a boar or a fish or
a tortoise fishes up the world out of the waters. That boar, fish,
tortoise, or what not, is Brahma or Vishnu. This savage conception of
the beginnings of creation in the act of a tortoise, fish, or boar is
not first found in the Puranas, as Mr. Muir points out, but is indicated
in the Black Yajur Veda and in the Satapatha Brahmana.(1) In the
Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 1, 2, 11, we discover the idea, so common in
savage myths--for example, in that of the Navajoes--that the earth was
at first very small, a mere patch, and grew bigger after the animal
fished it up. "Formerly this earth was only so large, of the size of
a span. A boar called Emusha raised her up." Here the boar makes no
pretence of being the inc