(“person,” or “spirit”), in Indian philosophy, the soul, or self. The existence of an eternal, unchanging self is accepted by most schools of Indian philosophy, though they differ in their description of its essence and the proofs for its existence.

In the dualistic philosophies of Sāṃkhya and Yoga, purusha is opposed to prakriti (prakṛti, “matter”), as the two ontological realities. All animate and inanimate objects and all psychomental experiences are emanations of prakriti. It is confusion of purusha with prakriti that is the soul's bondage; disassociation of purusha from prakriti is the soul's liberation.

Purusha is also, in one of the early creation myths related in the Vedas, the primal man from whose body the universe was created. He was both sacrificer and victim, and his rite was the imagined prototype for all later Vedic and Hindu sacrifices.