The Rig Veda is a collection of Sanskrit hymns composed by a group of anonymous authors in North India around 1,200 BC. The community of people who created the Rig Veda called themselves the Aryans (noble). The origin of the Aryans is much debated, but it is generally agreed that they originated somewhere in Central Asia and migrated South to India around 1,500 BC. As the Aryans moved south they conquered and displaced the original inhabitants of India who already lived in well-developed cities in the Indus Valley, which is in modern Pakistan.
The Aryans brought with them their liturgical and poetic language, Sanskrit. Sanskrit belongs to a family of languages called Indo-European languages; this is the largest language family in the world, and it consists of most European languages like: Latin, Greek, Spanish and English. Sanskrit and Persian are also members of the Indo-European family.
We don’t know what languages the Aryans spoke at home, but whatever these were, they always composed their bureaucratic, liturgical and poetic texts in Sanskrit. Sanskrit, therefore, became and remained the official religious and bureaucratic language of India from the Vedic era until the 12th century AD. Even after the 12th century Sanskrit continued to be the liturgical language of Hindus and Buddhists. In fact, as Buddhism spread throughout Asia Sanskrit went with it. Eventually, Buddhists in China and Japan learnt to read it and translate from it. Thus, Sanskrit which began its life in Vedic India became a pan-Asian language.
The Rig Veda is a collection of Sanskrit hymns and poems. Some poems are about natural phenomena like the night or the sunrise; other hymns are cosmogonic—or explanations of the creation (genesis) of the universe. One such cosmogonic hymn is the hymn about the ritual dismemberment (or sacrifice) of Purusha, the Cosmic Man.
Sacrifice and sacrificial offerings played an important part in Aryan culture, because Aryans believed that the universe was maintained by the regular offering of sacrifice through which humans express their relationship to the natural universe and to the Gods. These ‘sacrifices’ were not, as you might imagine, animal sacrifices; instead, they were large public rituals centered around a brick altar in which a fire was made and then clarified butter was sprinkled on the flames to nurture the fire. The brick altar was viewed as an image of the universe in small (microcosm), and the fire was the medium which carried the butter up into the universe for the benefit of the Gods. The pantheon of Aryan Gods was mostly the forces of nature: Indra, the God of lightning, Varuna, the God of Air. As far as we can tell, there were no physical images of the gods at the fire sacrifice. In this respect, the Aryan fire sacrifice was completely unlike Hindu temples, which, as you know, have many sculptural images of Gods and goddesses.
An Aryan fire sacrifice could be sponsored or patronized by any person of means—a king, a politician, a merchant or even a farmer. But it was usually carried out by a group of religious specialists called Brahmins who recited the Sanskrit Vedic hymns that accompanied the offerings into the fire.
SACRIFICE OF PURUSHA.
From Rig Veda
1: Purusha, (man) has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. He filled the earth and extended beyond it by ten finger lengths.
2: Purusha was all of this: whatever has been, whatever is yet to be. He is the ruler of all immortality; all living creatures are a quarter of him; while three quarters of him is immortal, and in heaven.
3: With three quarters of him Purusha rose upwards, while a quarter of him remained here. From the quarter remaining here he spread out in all directions into that which eats, and that which does not eat.
4: From him Viraj (woman) was born, and from Viraj came man.
5: When the Gods spread out the sacrifice with Purusha as the offering, spring was the clarified butter, summer the fuel, and autumn the oblation.
5a: They sprinkled Purusha—and the sacrifice was born at the very beginning, upon the sacred grass. With him the Gods and the sages sacrificed.
6: From the sacrifice in which everything was offered the melted fat was collected, and he made it into those beasts who live in the air, in the forest, and in the villages.
7: From that sacrifice the verses and chants were born, the rhythmical metres were born.
8: Horses were born from it, and those other animals that have two rows of teeth; cows were born from it, and also goats and sheep.
9: When they dismembered Purusha how many parts did they divide him into? What do they call his mouth, his two arms, his thighs and his feet?
10: His mouth became the Brahmin priests and poets; his arms became Kshatriyas, warriors and kings; his thighs became Vaishyas, the merchants; and from his feet servants, or Shudras, were born.
11: Moon was born from his mind; from his eye came the sun, and from his breath the Wind was born.
12: From his head the sky evolved, from his navel the middle space, from his two feet the earth, and the sky from his ears. Thus the Gods set the world in order.
13: With the sacrifice the Gods sacrificed to the sacrifice.