The Thirteen Principal Upanishads Author:Robert Ernest Hume Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BRIHAD-ARANYAKA UPANISHAD FIRST ADHYAYA FIRST BRAHMANA1 The world as a sacrificial horse " 1. Oml Verily, the dawn is the head of the sacrificial horse... more »; the sun, his eye; the wind, his breath; universal fire (Agni Vaisvanara), his open mouth. The year is the body (dtman) of the sacrificial horse ; the sky, his back; the atmosphere, his belly; the earth, the under part of his belly; the quarters, his flanks ; the intermediate quarters, his ribs; the seasons, his limbs; the months and half-months, his joints; days and nights, his feet; the stars, his bones ; the clouds, his flesh. Sand is the food in his stomach ; rivers are his entrails. His liver and lungs are the mountains; plants and trees, his hair. The orient is his fore part ; the Occident, his hind part. When he yawns, then it lightens. When he shakes himself, then it thunders. When he urinates, then it rains. Voice, indeed, is his voice. 2. Verily, the day arose for the horse as the sacrificial vessel which stands before. Its place is the eastern sea. Verily, the night arose for him as the sacrificial vessel which stands behind. Its place is the western sea. Verily, these two arose on both sides of the horse as the two sacrificial vessels.3 1 This Brahmana occurs also as Sat. Br. 10. 6. 4. 2 The Asva-medha, ' Horse-sacrifice,' the most elaborate and important of the animal sacrifices in ancient India (described at length in Sat. Br. 13. 1-5), is interpreted, in this and the following Brahmana, as of cosmic significance— a miniature reproduction of the world-order. In the litnrgy for the Horse-sacrifice (contained in VS. 22-25) there is a similar apportionment of the parts of the animal to the various parts of the world. Compare also a similar elaborate cosmic correlation of the ox at AV. 9. 7. ' The...« less