world of the immortals in heaven." In the Brahmanas, Purusha is the same as the creator, Prajapati, and in the Upanishads he is identified with the universe. Still later, in the dualistic Sankhya philosophy, Purusha becomes the name of "soul" as opposed to "matter." In the Hymn of Man a being called Viraj is mentioned as produced from Purusha. This in the later Vedanta philosophy is a name of the personal creator as contrasted with Brahma, the universal soul. The Purusha hymn, then, may be regarded as the oldest product of the pantheistic literature of India. It is at the same time one of the very latest poems of the Rigvedic age; for it presupposes a knowledge of the three oldest Vedas, to which it refers together by name. It also for the first and only time in the Rigveda mentions the four castes; for it is here said that Purusha's mouth became the Brahman, his arms the Rajanya (warrior), his thighs the Vaiçya (agriculturist), and his feet the Çudra (serf). In nearly all the other poems dealing with the origin 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" (hule). 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? What germ primeval did the waters cherish, Wherein the gods all saw themselves together, Which is beyond the earth, beyond that heaven, Beyond the mighty gods' mysterious dwelling?