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PURUSHA SUKTHAM
Sri Purusha Suktam
(Prathama anuvAkam)
Verse 1
THE COSMIC MAN
sahasra SIrshA Purusha: sahasrAksha: sahasra pat sa bhumim vishvato VREVA | atyatishTad da SAngulam
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Thousand head has Purusha Thousands of eyes has he, Thousands of legs has He He is manifested in the earth and all through the universe. He stands beyond the count of ten fingers.
The word "Purusha" in its most literal sense means Man. In that sense it is translated into Sanskrit as Cosmic Man - Nara - Narayana - Purushan - Purushotaman - Parama Purushan -the Great Man or Perfect Man. Purusha is not really human, anything that has consciousness or Personality is Purusha.
Thus we are not talking about just human beings but about the totality of created beings with personality in the whole universe, in all the cosmic dimensions. While this Supreme Being is a Person, he has a body. The whole cosmos is his body which includes both animate and inanimate. There are an infinite number of dimensions to the cosmos and He is in everything and everywhere.
So why does this Purusha have thousands of feet, hands, eyes? This Supreme Person is Omnipresent, Omniscient and Omnipotent.
And then we see that the Purusha extends beyond ten fingers. SAyaNA interprets it as "beyond human limitations." The ten fingers here are the digits, the ten fingers of human hands. They are the basis of count, of all mathematics, of all the logic and science built on measurables. But this Purusha is beyond the measurable material realms and beyond even human logic and understanding. In a sense the whole cosmos must be considered as the body of the Person. Just as body has several
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