Note 7 — VI THE SELF-OFFERING OF THE MESSIAH. THE SUPPER

The Bhagavadgîta shows that the idea of a self-sacrifice was associated with Krishna also, whom we have already learnt to recognise as a form of Agni, and that his becoming man was regarded as such a sacrifice. It (ii. 16) runs: “I am the act of sacrifice, the sacrifice of God and of man. I am the sap of the plant, the words, the sacrificial butter and fire, and at the same time the victim.” And in viii. 4 Krishna says of himself: “My presence in nature is my transitory being, my presence in the Gods is Purusha (i.e., my existence as Purusha), my presence in the sacrifices is myself incorporated in this body.” But Mithras too offers himself for mankind. For the bull whose death at the hands of the God takes the central position in all the representations of Mithras was originally none other than the God himself—the sun in the constellation of the Bull, at the spring equinox—the sacrifice of the bull accordingly being also a symbol of the God who gives his own life, in order by his death to bring a new, richer and better life. Mithras, too, performs this self-sacrifice, although his heart struggles against it, at the command of the God of Heaven, which is brought to him by a raven, the messenger of the God of Gods. (cf. Cumont, op. cit., 98 sqq.). And just as according to Vedic ideas Purusha was torn in pieces by the Gods and Dæmons and the world made out of his parts, so too according to Persian views the World Bull Abudad or the Bull Man Gayomart at the beginning of creation is supposed to have shed his blood for the world, to live again as Mithras (Sepp., op. cit., i. 330, ii. 6 sq.). ↑