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 "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.