141 
1877.] Gr. S. Leonard —The Mythic History of the God Viraj. 
pondering in himself, he beheld before him the form of Viraj, touching the 
sky with his head, his feet rooted in Tartarus, his ear-holes containing the 
cardinal points, and huge forests forming the hairs on his body. The 
orbits of heavenly bodies appeared as circles on his person, and the wide 
seas looked as drops of sweat on his body, millions and millions of deities 
sporting on the tips of his fingers and nails, and the fourteen spheres of 
planetary bodies in the universe revolving in his belly. This being then 
snatched the demon and killed him in a trice, as children do bugs with 
their nails.” 
The Vishnu Purana, which is devoted to Vishnu, represents that god as 
Viraj in the incarnations of Krishna and Baladeva. It says that the gods 
being persecuted by the demon Kansa complained to Vishnu of their grie¬ 
vances, who, in reply, told them that he will undertake to quell the arch¬ 
fiend by assuming his form of Viraj in his incarnation of Krishna at Vrin- 
davana, and forthwith showed his Viratrupa, which the gods hallowed and 
adored. 
Now as regards his consort Sat ar up a, [centiforma] the female per¬ 
sonification of material force [sakti], as Viraj is the male prosopopcea of 
spiritual energy, I have to mention that the words hundred and thousand in 
the appellations of both are mere metonymies of determinate numbers for 
indeterminate ones by figure of speech, as both spirit as well as matter can 
assume an infinity of shapes and forms. This female, in the various autho¬ 
rities quoted above, is sometimes made to represent the wife of Brahma, at 
other times of Viraj and lastly of Svayambhuva Manu. But Moore, in his 
Hindu Pantheon, takes her for the wife of Viraj purusha only, and says, 
on the authority of Colebrooke, that the notion of Viraj dividing himself 
into male and female forms occurs almost in every Purana, and the colossal 
figure in the cave of Elephanta bears relation to this division and re-union 
of Viraj. The partition of the body into male and female halves may very 
likely lead us to suppose this person to be Brahma whom Manu has repre¬ 
sented to be divided into two epicine halves, as also Svayambhuva Manu, 
the first man or Adam of the Hindus, whose left half, [rib or side] gave 
birth to the mother of mankind. But we know for certain on the autho¬ 
rity of Manu that Viraj was not the same with his progenitor Brahma, 
nor identical with his progeny Svayambhuva, whom “ I)ara Shikoh” says 
Sir William Jones, was persuaded to believe, and not without sound reason, 
to be no other person than the progenitor of mankind, to whom the Jews, 
Christians, and Muliammedans unite in giving the name of Adam. There¬ 
fore S'atarupa, who is designated by the special title of Kajdarika or wife 
of Viraj, in the Budra Yamala Tantra, could not be the consort either of 
Brahma or Svayambhuva, as represented in the confused accounts given of 
her in the different Puranas, the inconsistencies of which are so apparent, 
