may be "secondary," as Mr. Max Müller says, but in any case it too strongly resembles the otber wars in heaven of other mythologies to be quite omitted. Unluckily, the most consecutive account of the strife is to be found, not in the hymns of the Vedas, but in the collected body of mythical and other traditions called the Brahmanas.[1] The story in the Brahmana begins by saying that Prajapati (the producer of things, whose acquaintance we have made in the chapter on cosmogonic myths) was half mortal and half immortal. After creating things endowed with life, he created Death, the devourer. With that part of him which was mortal, he was afraid of Death, and the gods were also "afraid of this ender, Death." The gods in this tradition are regarded as mortals. Compare the Black Yajur Veda:[2] "The gods were formerly just like men. They desired to overcome want, misery, death, and to go to the divine assembly. They saw, took, and sacrificed with this Chaturvimsatiratra, and in consequence overcame want, misery, and death, and reached the divine assembly." In the same Veda we are told that the gods and Asuras contended together; the gods were less numerous, but, as politicians make men peers, they added to their number by placing some bricks in the proper position to receive the sacrificial fire. They then used incantations, "Thou art a multiplier;" and so the bricks became animated, and joined the party of the gods, and made numbers more equal.[3] To return
- ↑ Satapatha Br. throughout. See the Oxford translation.
- ↑ Taittiriya Sanhita; Muir, v. 15, note 22.
- ↑ According to a later legend, or a legend which we have received in a later form, the gods derived immortality from drinking of the churned
