Until about 1000 BC, Aryans had not penetrated further east than the Jamuna River, but they eventually spread into the Ganges Valley, and reached as far as the western frontiers of Bengal by 800 BC. Concurrently, the 10th Mandala of the Rig-Veda revealed Prajapati (Lord of Creation) as the ‘God who has ever been the One King of all that breathes’.
Sacrifice (Yajna) was elevated to supreme importance, as the very process by which the universe came into being, and the ritual actions of Yajna became invested with magical power.
Sacrifice performed in the phenomenal world has an effect more vast than the act itself, and the supernatural power that produces this disproportionate effect is Brih (‘Vast’, as the boundless sky) ~ the power of Varuna, now considered inherent within, and wielded by, Brahman.
In the Vedas, the neuter Brahman (nom. Brahma) refers to sacred utterance or Mantra, and the power contained in it; and the noble gods of the early Rig-Veda were said to possess Brahman. The Lord of this ‘Logos-Brahman’, however, was Brahmanaspati or Brihaspati.
As the Brahmana's priest-craft was elaborated, three priests (Purohita) became necessary for correct Yajna. The chief Hotar followed the Rig-Veda, whose Mantras were rearranged as Gayatri in the Sama (Song) Veda for a second priest (Udgatar) to intone. And a third Revelation was compiled, the Yajur (Sacrificial) Veda, which provides supplementary ritual formulae for the Adhvaryu, who was responsible for the manual elements of Yajna.
Vedic cosmogony, however, remained rather nebulous:
Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? And what gave shelter? Was water there, of unfathomed depth?
Death was not then, nor was there immortality: no sign was there, the divider of day and night.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness, this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Singularity.
Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages, who searched with their hearts, discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.
Who verily knows and who can declare it, when was it born and whence comes this creation?
The gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then when it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows it not.
[from Rig-Veda Samhita ~ Transl. R.T.H. Griffith]
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