of the world, not the gods collectively but an individual creator is the actor. Various passages in other hymns show that the sun was regarded as an important agent of generation by the Rishis. Thus he is described as "the soul of all that moves and stands" (i. 115, 1), and is said to be "called by many names though one" (i. 164, 46). Such statements indicate that the sun was in process of being abstracted to the character of a creator. This is probably the origin of Viçvakarman, "the all-creating," to whom two cosmogonic hymns (x. 81-82) are addressed. Three of the seven stanzas of the first deserve to be quoted:—
- What was the place on which he gained a footing?
- Where found he anything, or how, to hold by,
- What time, the earth creating, Viçvakarman,
- All-seeing, with his might disclosed the heavens?
- Who has his eyes and mouth in every quarter,
- Whose arms and feet are turned in all directions,
- The one god, when the earth and heaven creating,
- With his two arms and wings together welds them.
- What was the wood, and what the tree, pray tell us,
- From which they fashioned forth the earth and heaven?
- Ye sages, in your mind, pray make inquiry,
- Whereon he stood, when he the worlds supported?
It is an interesting coincidence that "wood," the term here used, was regularly employed in Greek philosophy to express "original matter" (hūlē).
In the next hymn (x. 82), the theory is advanced that the waters produced the first germ of things, the source of the universe and the gods.
- Who is our father, parent, and disposer,
- Who knows all habitations and all beings,
- Who only to the gods their names apportions:
- To him all other beings turn inquiring?
