Produced by Barbara Tozier, Douglas L. Alley, III, Bill
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ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY
OR
THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS
BY
ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS
PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN THE ISTITUTO DI STUDII
SUPERIORI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO, AT FLORENCE
FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY
OF THE DUTCH INDIES
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOL. I.
LONDON
TRÜBNER & CO., 60 PATERNOSTER ROW
1872
[_All rights reserved_]
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
TO
MICHELE AMARI AND MICHELE COPPINO
This Work
IS DEDICATED
AS A TRIBUTE OF LIVELY GRATITUDE AND
PROFOUND ESTEEM
BY
THE AUTHOR.
ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY;
OR
THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS.
First Part.
THE ANIMALS OF THE EARTH.
CHAPTER I.
THE COW AND THE BULL.
SECTION I.--THE COW AND THE BULL IN THE VEDIC HYMNS.
SUMMARY.
Prelude.--The vault of Heaven as a luminous cow.--The gods and
goddesses, sons and daughters of this cow.--The vault of Heaven as a
spotted cow.--The sons and daughters of this cow, _i.e._ the winds,
Marutas, and the clouds, Priçnayas.--The wind-bulls subdue the
cloud-cows.--Indras, the rain-sending, thundering, lightening,
radiant sun, who makes the rain fall and the light return, called
the bull of bulls.--The bull Indras drinks the water of
strength.--Hunger and thirst of the heroes of mythology.--The
cloud-barrel.--The horns of the bull and of the cow are
sharpened.--The thunderbolt-horns.--The cloud as a cow, and even as
a stable or hiding-place for cows.--Cavern where the cows are shut
up, of which cavern the bull Indras and the bulls Marutas remove the
stone, and force the entrance, to reconquer the cows, delivering
them from the monster; the male Indras finds himself again with his
wife.--The cloud-fortress, which Indras destroys and Agnis sets on
fire.--The cloud-forest, which the gods destroy.--The cloud-cow; the
cow-bow; the bird-thunderbolts; the birds come out of the cow.--The
monstrous cloud-cow, the wife of the monster.--Some phenomena of
the cloudy sky are analogous to those of the gloomy sky of night and
of winter.--The moment most fit for an epic poem is the meeting of
such phenomena in a nocturnal tempest.--The stars, cows put to
flight by the sun.--The moon, a milk-yielding cow.--The ambrosial
moon fished up in the fountain, gives nourishment to Indras.--The
moon as a male, or bull, discomfits, with the bull Indras, the
monster.--The two bulls, or the two stallions, the two horsemen, the
twins.--The bull chases the wolf from the waters.--The cow
tied.--The aurora, or ambrosial cow, formed out of the skin of
another cow by the Ribhavas.--The Ribhavas, bulls and wise
birds.--The three Ribhavas reproduce the triple Indras and the
triple Vishnus; their three relationships; the three brothers,
eldest, middle, youngest; the three brother workmen; the youngest
brother is the most intelligent, although at first thought stupid;
the reason why.--The three brothers guests of a king.--The third of
the Ribhavas, the third and youngest son becomes Tritas the third,
in the heroic form of Indras, who kills the monster; Tritas, the
third brother, after having accomplished the great heroic
undertaking, is abandoned by his envious brothers in the well; the
second brother is the son of the cow.--Indras a cowherd, parent of
the sun and the aurora, the cow of abundance, milk-yielding and
luminous.--The cow Sîtâ.--Relationship of the sun to the
aurora.--The aurora as cow-nurse of the sun, mother of the cows; the
aurora cowherd; the sun hostler and cowherd.--The riddle of the
wonderful cowherd; the sun solves the riddle proposed by the
aurora.--The aurora wins the race, being the first to arrive at the
barrier, without making use of her feet.--The chariot of the
aurora.--She who has no feet, who leaves no footsteps; she who is
without footsteps of the measure of the feet; she who has no slipper
(which is the measure of the foot).--The sun who never puts his foot
down, the sun without feet, the sun lame, who, during the night,
becomes blind; the blind and the lame who help each other, whom
Indra helps, whom the ambrosia of the aurora enables to walk and to
see.--The aurora of evening, witch who blinds the sun; the sun
Indras, in the morning, chases the aurora away; Indras subdues and
destroys the witch aurora.--The brother sun follows, as a seducer,
the aurora his sister, and wishes to burn her.--The sun follows his
daughter the aurora.--The aurora, a beautiful young girl, deliverer
of the sun, rich in treasure, awakener of the sleepers, saviour of
mankind, foreseeing; from small becomes large, from dark becomes
brilliant, from infirm, whole, from blind, seeing and protectress of
sight.--Night and aurora, now mother and daughter, now
sisters.--The luminous night a good sister; the gloomy night gives
place to the aurora, her elder or better sister, working, purifying,
cleansing.--The aurora shines only when near the sun her husband,
before whom she dances splendidly dressed; the aurora Urvaçî.--The
wife of the sun followed by the monster.--The husband of the aurora
subject to the same persecution.
We are on the vast table-land of Central Asia; gigantic mountains send
forth on every side their thousand rivers; immense pasture-lands and
forests cover it; migratory tribes of pastoral nations traverse it;
the _gopatis_, the shepherd or lord of the cows, is the king; the
gopatis who has most herds is the most powerful. The story begins with
a graceful pastoral idyll.
To increase the number of the cows, to render them fruitful in milk
and prolific in calves, to have them well looked after, is the dream,
the ideal of the ancient Aryan. The bull, the _foecundator_, is the
type of every male perfection, and the symbol of regal strength.
Hence, it is only natural that the two most prominent animal figures
in the mythical heaven should be the cow and the bull.
The cow is the ready, loving, faithful, fruitful Providence of the
shepherd.
The worst enemy of the Aryan, therefore, is he who carries off the
cow; the best, the most illustrious, of his friends, he who is able to
recover it from the hands of the robber.
The same idea is hence transferred to heaven; in heaven there is a
beneficent, fruitful power, which is called the cow, and a beneficent
_foecundator_ of this same power, which is called the bull.
The dewy moon, the dewy aurora, the watery cloud, the entire vault of
heaven, that giver of the quickening and benignant rain, that
benefactress of mankind,--are each, with special predilection,
represented as the beneficent cow of abundance. The lord of this
multiform cow of heaven, he who makes it pregnant and fruitful and
milk-yielding, the spring or morning sun, the rain-giving sun (or
moon) is often represented as a bull.
Now, to apprehend all this clearly, we ought to go back, as nearly as
possible, to that epoch in which such conceptions would arise
spontaneously; but as the imagination so indulged is apt to betray us
into mere fantastical conceits, into an _à priori_ system, we shall
begin by excluding it entirely from these preliminary researches, as
being hazardous and misleading, and content ourselves with the humbler
office of collecting the testimonies of the poets themselves who
assisted in the creation of the mythology in question.
I do not mean to say anything of the Vedic myths that is not taken
from one or other of the hymns contained in the greatest of the Vedas,
but only to arrange and connect together the links of the chain as
they certainly existed in the imagination of the ancient Aryan people,
and which the _Rigvedas_, the work of a hundred poets and of several
centuries, presents to us as a whole, continuous and artistic. I shall
indeed suppose myself in the valley of Kaçmîra, or on the banks of the
Sindhus, under that sky, at the foot of these mountains, among these
rivers; but I shall search in the sky for that which I find in the
hymns, and not in the hymns for that which I may imagine I see in the
sky. I shall begin my voyage with a trusty chart, and shall consult it
with all the diligence in my power, in order not to lose any of the
advantages that a voyage so full of surprises has to offer. Hence the
notes will all, or nearly all, consist of quotations from my guide, in
order that the learned reader may be able to verify for himself every
separate assertion. And as to the frequent stoppages we shall have to
make by the way, let me ask the reader not to ascribe these to
anything arbitrary on my part, but rather to the necessities of a
voyage, made, as it is, step by step, in a region but little known,
and by the help of a guide, where nearly everything indeed is to be
found, but where, as in a rich inventory, it is easier to lose one's
way than to find it again.
The immense vault of heaven which over-arches the earth, as the eternal
storehouse of light and rain, as the power which causes the grass to
grow, and therefore the animals which pasture upon it, assumes in the
Vedic literature the name of Aditis, or the infinite, the inexhaustible,
the fountain of ambrosia (_amritasya nabhis_). Thus far, however, we
have no personification, as yet we have no myth. The _amritas_ is simply
the immortal, and only poetically represents the rain, the dew, the
luminous wave. But the inexhaustible soon comes to mean that which can
be milked without end--and hence also, a celestial cow, an inoffensive
cow, which we must not offend, which must remain intact.[1] The whole
heavens being thus represented as an infinite cow, it was natural that
the principal and most visible phenomena of the sky should become, in
their turn, children of the cow, or themselves cows or bulls, and that
the _foecundator_ of the great mother should also be called a bull.
Hence we read that the wind (_Vâyus_ or _Rudrâs_) gave birth, from the
womb of the celestial cow, to the winds that howl in the tempest
(_Marutas_ and _Rudrâs_), called for this reason children of the cow.[2]
But, since this great celestial cow produces the tempestuous, noisy
winds, she represents not only the serene, tranquil vault of the shining
sky, but also the cloudy and tenebrous mother of storms. This great
cow, this immense cloud, that occupies all the vault of heaven and
unchains the winds, is a brown, dark, spotted (_priçnis_) cow; and so
the winds, or Marutas, her sons, are called the children of the spotted
one.[3] The singular has thus become a plural; the male sons of the
cloud, the winds, are 21; the daughters, the clouds themselves, called
the spotted ones (_priçnayas_) are also three times seven, or 21: 3 and
7 are sacred numbers in the Aryan faith; and the number 21 is only a
multiple of these two great legendary numbers, by which either the
strength of a god or that of a monster is often symbolised. If
_priçnis_, or the variegated cow, therefore, is the mother of the
Marutas, the winds, and of the variegated ones (_priçnayas_), the
clouds, we may say that the clouds are the sisters of the winds. We
often have three or seven sisters, three or seven brothers in the
legends. Now, that 21, in the _Rigvedas_ itself, involves a reference to
3, is evident, if we only observe how one hymn speaks of the 3 times 7
spotted cows who bring to the god the divine drink, while another speaks
of the spotted ones (the number not being specified) who give him three
lakes to drink.[4] Evidently here the 3, or 7, or 21 sister cows that
yield to the god of the eastern heavens their own nutritious milk, and
amidst whose milky humours the winds, now become invulnerable,
increase,[5] fulfil the pious duties of benevolent guardian fates.
But if the winds are sons of a cow, and the cows are their nurses,
the winds, or Marutas, must, as masculine, be necessarily represented
as bulls. In reality the Wind (_Vâyus_), their father, is borne by
bulls--that is, by the winds themselves, who hurry, who grow, are
movable as the rays of the sun, very strong, and indomitable;[6] the
strength of the wind is compared to that of the bull or the bear;[7]
the winds, as lusty as bulls, overcome and subdue the dark ones.[8]
Here, therefore, the clouds are no longer represented as the cows that
nurse, but with the gloomy aspect of a monster. The Marutas, the winds
that howl in the tempest, are as swift as lightning, and surround
themselves with lightning. Hence they are celebrated for their
luminous vestments; and hence it is said that the reddish winds are
resplendent with gems, as some bulls with stars.[9] As such--that is,
as subduers of the clouds, and as they who run impetuously through
them--these winds, these bulls, are the best friends, the most
powerful helpers, of the great bellowing bull; of the god of thunder
and rain; of the sun, the dispeller of clouds and darkness; of the
supreme Vedic god, Indras, the friend of light and ambrosia--of
Indras, who brings with him daylight and fine weather, who sends us
the beneficent dew and the fertilising rain. Like the winds his
companions, the sun Indras--the sun (and the luminous sky) hidden in
the dark, who strives to dissipate the shadows, the sun hidden in the
cloud that thunders and lightens, to dissolve it in rain--is
represented as a powerful bull, as the bull of bulls, invincible son
of the cow, that bellows like the Marutas.[10]
But in order to become a bull, in order to grow, to develop the strength
necessary to kill the serpent, Indras must drink; and he drinks the
water of strength, the _somas_.[11] "Drink and grow,"[12] one of the
poets says to him, while offering the symbolical libation of the cup of
sacrifice, which is a type of the cup of heaven, now the heavenly vault,
now the cloud, now the sun, and now the moon. From the sweet food of the
celestial cow, Indras acquires a swiftness which resembles that of the
horse;[13] and he eats and drinks at one time enough to enable him to
attain maturity at once. The gods give him three hundred oxen to eat,
and three lakes of ambrosial liquor[14] to drink, in order that he may
be able to kill the monster serpent. The hunger and thirst of the heroes
is always proportioned to the miracle they are called upon to perform;
and for this reason the hymns of the _Rigvedas_ and of the
_Atharvavedas_ often represent the cloud as an immense great-bellied
barrel (_Kabandhas_), which is carried by the divine _bull_.[15]
But when and how does the hero-bull display his extraordinary
strength? The terrible bull bellows, and shows his strength, as he
sharpens his horns:[16] the splendid bull, with sharpened horns, who
is able of himself to overthrow all peoples.[17] But what are the
horns of the bull Indras, the god of thunder? Evidently the
thunderbolts; Indras is, in fact, said to sharpen the thunderbolts as
a bull sharpens his horns;[18] the thunderbolt of Indras is said to be
thousand-pointed;[19] the bull Indras is called the bull with the
thousand horns, who rises from the sea[20] (or from the cloudy ocean
as a thunder-dealing sun, from the gloomy ocean as a radiant sun--the
thunderbolt being supposed to be rays from the solar disc). Sometimes
the thunderbolt of Indras is itself called a bull,[21] and is
sharpened by its beloved refulgent cows,[22] being used, now to
withdraw the cows from the darkness, now to deliver them from the
monster of darkness that envelops them,[23] and now to destroy the
monster of clouds and darkness itself. Besides the name of Indras,
this exceedingly powerful horned bull, who sharpens his horns to
plunge them into the monster, assumes also, as the fire which sends
forth lightning, as that which sends forth rays of light from the
clouds and the darkness, the name of Agnis; and, as such, has two
heads, four horns, three feet, seven hands, teeth of fire, and wings;
he is borne on the wind, and blows.[24]
Thus far, then, we have heavenly cows which nurture heavenly bulls,
and heavenly bulls and cows which use their horns for a battle that is
fought in heaven.
Let us now suppose ourselves on the field of battle, and let us visit
both the hostile camps. In one we find the sun (and sometimes the moon),
the bull of bulls Indras, with the winds, Marutas, the radiant and
bellowing bulls; in the other, a multiform monster, in the shape of
wolves, serpents, wild boars, owls, mice, and such like. The bull Indras
has cows with him, who help him; the monster has also cows, either such
as he has carried off from Indras, and which he imprisons and secretes
in gloomy caverns, towers, or fortresses, or those which he caresses as
his own wives. In the one case, the cows consider the bull Indras as
their friend and liberating hero; in the other, those with the monster
are themselves monsters and enemies of Indras, who fights against them.
The clouds, in a word, are regarded at one time as the friends of the
rain-giving sun, who delivers them from the monster that keeps back the
rain, and at another as attacked by the sun, as they who wickedly
envelop him, and endeavour to destroy him. Let us now go on to search,
in the _Rigvedas_, the proofs of this double battle.
To begin with the first phase of the conflict, where in the sky does
Indras fight the most celebrated of all his battles?
The clouds generally assume the aspect of mountains; the words _adris_
and _parvatas_, in the Vedic language, expressing the several ideas of
stone, mountain, and cloud.[25] The cloud being compared to a stone, a
rock, or a mountain, it was natural,--1st, To imagine in the rock or
mountain dens or caverns, which, as they imprisoned cows, might be
likened to stables;[26] 2d, To pass from the idea of a rock to that of
citadel, fortress, fortified city, tower; 3d, To pass from the idea of
a mountain, which is immovable, to that of a tree which, though it
cannot move from its place, yet rears itself and expands in the air;
and from the idea of the tree of the forest to the shadowy and
awe-inspiring grove. Hence the bull, or hero, or god Indras, or the
sun of thunder, lightning, and rain, now does battle within a cavern,
now carries a fortified town by assault, and now draws forth the cow
from the forest, or unbinds it from the tree, destroying the
_rakshas_, or monster, that enchained it.
The Vedic poetry celebrates, in particular, the exploit of Indras
against the cavern, enclosure, or mountain in which the monster
(called by different names and especially by those of Valas, Vritras,
Cushnas, of enemy, black one, thief, serpent, wolf, or wild boar)
conceals the herds of the celestial heroes, or slaughters them.
The black bull bellows; the thunderbolt bellows, that is, the thunder
follows the lightning, as the cow follows its calf;[27] the Marutas
bulls ascend the rock--now, by their own efforts, moving and making
the sonorous stone, the rock mountain, fall;[28] now, with the iron
edge of their rolling chariots violently splitting the mountain;[29]
the valiant hero, beloved by the gods, moves the stone;[30] Indras
hears the cows: by the aid of the wind-bulls he finds the cows hidden
in the cavern; he himself, furnished with an arm of stone, opens the
grotto of Valas, who keeps the cows; or, opens the cavern to the cows;
he vanquishes, kills, and pursues the thieves in battle; the bulls
bellow; the cows move forward to meet them; the bull, Indras, bellows
and leaves his seed in the herd; the thunder-dealing male, Indras, and
his spouse are glad and rejoice.[31]
In this fabled enterprise, three moments must be noted: 1st, The
effort to raise the stone; 2d, The struggle with the monster who
carried off the cows; 3d, The liberation of the prisoners. It is an
entire epic poem.
The second form of the enterprise of Indras in the cloudy heavens is
that which has for its object the destruction of the celestial
fortresses, of the ninety, or ninety-nine, or hundred cities of
Çambaras, of the cities which were the wives of the demons; and from
this undertaking Indras acquired the surname of _puramdaras_
(explained as destroyer of cities); although he had in it a most
valuable companion-in-arms, Agnis, that is, Fire, which naturally
suggests to our thoughts the notion of destruction by fire.[32]
In a hymn to Indras, the gods arrive at last, bring their axes, and with
their edges destroy the woods, and burn the monsters who restrain the
milk in the breasts of the cows.[33] The clouded sky here figures in the
imagination as a great forest inhabited by _rakshasas_, or monsters,
which render it unfruitful--that is, which prevent the great celestial
cow from giving her milk. The cow that gives the honey, the ambrosial
cow of the Vedâs, is thus replaced by a forest which hides the honey,
the ambrosia beloved by the gods. And although the Vedic hymns do not
dwell much upon this conception of the cloudy-sky, preferring as they do
to represent the darkness of night as a gloomy forest, the above passage
from the Vedâs is worthy of notice as indicating the existence at least
during the Vedic period of a myth which was afterwards largely amplified
in zoological legend.[34]
In this threefold battle of Indras, we must, moreover, remark a curious
feature. The thunder-dealing Indras overpowers his enemies with arrows
and darts; the same cloud which thunders, bellows, and therefore is
called a cow, becomes, as throwing darts, a bow: hence we have the
cow-bow, from which Indras hurls the iron stone, the thunderbolt; and
the cord itself of that bellowing bow is called a cow; from the bow-cow,
from the cord-cow, come forth the winged darts, the thunderbolts, called
birds, that eat men; and when they come forth, all the world
trembles.[35] We shall come upon the same idea again further on.
Thus far we have considered the cow-cloud as a victim of the monster
(that Indras comes to subdue). But it is not uncommon to see the cloud
itself or the darkness, that is, the cow, the fortress, or the forest
represented as a monster. Thus, a Vedic hymn informs us that the monster
Valas had the shape of a cow;[36] another hymn represents the cloud as
the cow that forms the waters, and that has now one foot, now four, now
eight, now nine, and fills the highest heaven with sounds;[37] still
another hymn sings that the sun hurls his golden disc in the variegated
cow;[38] they who have been carried off, who are guarded by the monster
serpent, the waters, the cows, are become the wives of the demons;[39]
and they must be malignant, since a poet can use as a curse the wish
that the malign spirits, the demons, may drink the poison of those
cows.[40] We have already seen that the fortresses are wives of demons,
and that the demons possessed the forests.[41]
It is in the beclouded and thundering heavens that the warrior hero
displays his greatest strength; but it cannot be denied that the great
majority of the myths, and the most poetical, exemplify or represent the
relation between the nocturnal sky (now dark, tenebrous, watery, horrid,
wild, now lit up by the ambrosial moon-beams, and now bespangled with
stars) and the two glowing skies--the two resplendent ambrosial
twilights of morning and evening (of autumn and spring). We have here
the same general phenomenon of light and darkness engaged in strife;
here, again, the sun Indras is hidden, as though in a cloud, to prepare
the light, to recover from the monster of darkness the waters of youth
and light, the riches, the cows, which he keeps concealed; but this
conquest is only made by the hero after long wandering amidst many
dangers, and is finally accomplished by battles, in which the principal
credit is often due to a heroine; except in those cases, not frequent
but well worthy of remark, in which the clouds, hurricanes, tempests of
lightning and thunderbolts, coincide with the end of the night (or of
winter), and the sun Indras, by tearing the clouds, at the same time
disperses the darkness of night and brings dawn (or spring) back to the
sky. In such coincidences, the sun Indras, besides being the greatest of
the gods, reveals himself to be also the most epic of the heroes; the
two skies, the dark and the clouded, with their relative monsters, and
the two suns, the thundering and the radiant, with their relative
companions, are confounded, and the myth then assumes all its poetical
splendour. And the most solemn moments of the great national Aryan epic
poems, the _Râmâyanam_ and the _Mahâbhâratam_, the _Book of Kings_, as
well as those of the _Iliad_, the _Song of Roland_ and the _Nibelungen_,
are founded upon this very coincidence of the two solar actions--the
cloudy and shadowy monster thunderstruck, and the dawn (or spring)
delivered and resuscitated. In truth, the _Rigvedas_ itself, in a
passage already quoted,[42] tells us that the clouds--the three times
seven spotted cows--cause their milk to drop to a god (whom, from
another similar passage,[43] we know to be Indras, the sun) in the
eastern sky (_pûrve vyomani_), that is, towards the morning, and
sometimes towards the spring, many of the phenomena of which correspond
to those of the aurora. The _Priçnayas_, or spotted ones, are beyond
doubt the clouds, as the Marutas, sons of Priçnis, or the spotted one,
are the winds that howl and lighten in the storm cloud. It is therefore
necessary to carry back the cloudy sky towards the morning, to
understand the Priçnayas feeding the sun Indras in the eastern heavens
and the seven _Añgirasas_, the seven sunbeams, the seven wise men, who
also sing hymns in the morning;--it seems to me that the hymn of these
fabled wise men can be nothing else than the crash of the thunderbolts,
which, as we have already seen, are supposed to be detached from the
solar rays. Allusions to Indras thundering in the morning are so
frequent in the Vedic hymns, that I hope to be excused for this short
digression, from which I must at once return, because my sole object
here is to treat in detail of the mythical animals, and because the road
we have to take will be a long one.
Even the luminous night has its cows; the stars, which the sun puts to
flight with his rays,[44] are cows: the cows themselves, whose
dwellings the dwellings of the sun's cows must adjoin, are called the
many-horned ones.[45] These dwellings seem to me worthy of passing
remark, they are the celestial houses that move, the enchanted huts
and palaces that appear, disappear, and are transformed so often in
the popular stories of the Aryans.
The moon is generally a male, for its most popular names, _Candras_,
_Indus_, and _Somas_ are masculine; but as Somas signifies ambrosia,
the moon, as giver of ambrosia, soon came to be considered a
milk-giving cow; in fact, moon is one among the various meanings given
in Sanskrit to the word _gâus_ (cow). The moon, Somas, who illumines
the nocturnal sky, and the pluvial sun, Indras, who during the night,
or the winter, prepares the light of morn, or spring, are represented
as companions; a young girl, the evening, or autumnal, twilight, who
goes to draw water towards night, or winter, finds in the well, and
takes to Indras, the ambrosial moon, that is, the Somas whom he loves.
Here are the very words of the Vedic hymn:--"The young girl,
descending towards the water, found the moon in the fountain, and
said: 'I will take you to Indras, I will take you to Çakras; flow, O
moon, and envelop Indras.'"[46] The moon and ambrosia in the word
indus, as well as somas, are confounded with one another; hence,
Indras, the drinker _par excellence_ of _somas_ (somapâtamas), is also
the best friend and companion of the ambrosial or pluvial moon, and so
the sun and moon (as also Indras and Vishnus) together come to suggest
to us the idea of two friends, two brothers (Indus and Indras), two
twins, the two Açvinâu; often the two twilights, properly speaking,
the morning and the evening, the spring and the autumn, twilights, the
former, however, being especially associated with the red sun which
appears in the morning (or in the spring), and the latter with the
pale moon which appears in the evening (or in the autumn, as a
particular regent of the cold season). Indras and Somas (_Indrâsomâu_)
are more frequently represented as two bulls who together discomfit
the monster (_rakshohanâu_), who destroy by fire the monsters that
live in darkness.[47] The word _vrishanâu_ properly means the two who
pour out, or fertilise. Here it means the two bulls; but as the word
_vrishan_ signifies stallion as well as bull, the two stallions, the
vrishanâu Indras and Somas, are, by a natural transition, soon
transformed into two horses or horsemen, the two Açvinâu. Hence, in
popular tales, we find near the young princess the hero, who now leads
out the cows to pasture, and now, as hostler or groom, takes excellent
care of the horses. But we must not anticipate comparisons which we
shall have to make further on. Having noticed that, in the _Rigvedas_,
we find the moon represented either as a bull or a cow (the masculine,
_Indus_, _somas_, _candras_, is always a bull; while the feminine,
_râkâ_, suggests more naturally the idea of a cow), let us now
consider the bull Indras in relation to the cow Aurora (or spring).
Five bulls stand in the midst of the heavens, and chase out of the way
the wolf who crosses the waters;[48] the luminous Vasavas unbind the
cow that is tied by its foot.[49]
How now is this cow brought forth?
This ambrosial cow is created by the artists of the gods, by the three
brothers _Ribhavas_, who draw it out of the skin of a cow; that is,
they make a cow, and, to give it life, cover it with the skin of a
dead cow.[50] It being understood that the cow Aurora (or Spring) dies
at even (or in the autumn), the Ribhavas, the threefold sun Indras,
_i.e._, the sun in the three watches of the night, prepares the skin
of this cow, one Ribhus taking off the skin from the dead cow, another
Ribhus preparing it during the night (or winter), and the third
Ribhus, in the early morning (or at the end of winter) dressing the
new cow, the aurora (or the spring) with it. Thus it is that Indras,
in three distinct moments, takes the skin from off the girl that he
loves, who had become ugly during the night, and restores her beauty
in the morning.[51] And the three Ribhavas may, it seems to me, be the
more easily identified with the triple Indras, with Indra-Vishnus, who
measures the world in three paces, since, as Indras is called a bull,
they also are called bulls;[52] as Indras is often a falcon, they also
are named birds;[53] and their miracles are sometimes also those of
Indras. This identification of the bulls Ribhavas, whom we speak of
here as producers of the cow Aurora (the same sterile cow of the
sleeping hero Çayus, that which the Açvinâu, the two horsemen of the
twilight, restored to youth by the Ribhavas, rendered fruitful
again),[54] with the bull, or hero Indras, appears to me to be of the
greatest importance, inasmuch as it affords us the key to much that is
most vital to the Aryan legends.
The Ribhavas, then, are three brothers. They prepare themselves to
procure the cups which are to serve for the gods to drink out of. Each
has a cup in his hand; the eldest brother defies the others to make
two cups out of one; the second defies them to make three out of one;
the youngest brother comes forward and defies them to make four. The
victory is his, and the greatest workman of heaven, the Vedic Vulcan,
_Tvashtar_, praises their wonderful work.[55] The youngest of the
three brothers is therefore the most skilful. We find in the
_Rigvedas_ the name of _Sukarmas_, or maker of fine works, good
workman, given to each of the three brothers; and though only one of
them, who is properly called Ribhus, or _Rîbhukshâ_, is said to serve
the god Indras in the quality of a workman (whence Indras himself
sometimes received the name of Ribhukshâ, Ribhvan, or Ribhvas), yet
the other two brothers, _Vâgas_ and _Vibhvan_, are in the service, one
of all the gods, the other of Varunas, the god of night.[56] It would
seem natural to recognise in Ribhus, the protégé of Indras, the most
skilful of the three brothers, who, as we have seen above, was the
youngest; yet, as we cannot infer anything from the order in which the
hymns name the three brothers--as, in one, Vâgas is first named, then
Ribhukshâ, and finally Vibhvan; in another, Vâgas first, Vibhvan
second, and Ribhus third;[57] in another, again, Ribhus is invoked
first, then Vibhvan, and lastly Vâgas; and as we also find all the
Ribhavas saluted under the common epithet of Vâgas, and Vâgas himself
by the name of Indras, or rather Indras saluted in his triple form of
Ribhus, Vibhvan, and Vâgas,[58] it remains uncertain which of these
was the proper name of the third brother of the Ribhavas. But what
seems to be sufficiently clear is, that Indras is identified with the
Ribhavas (_Indravantas_), that the third brother is the most skilful,
and that the three brothers serve the lords of heaven as workmen. And
here we meet with an interesting element. In two hymns of the
_Rigvedas_, the host of the Ribhavas appears as one only, Indras
himself, or the sun (Savitar), under the name of _Agohyas_ (_i.e._,
who cannot be hidden). During the twelve days (the twelve hours of the
night, or the twelve months of the year) in which they are the guests
of Agohyas, they bring as they sleep every species of prosperity to
the land, by making the fields fertile, causing the rivers to flow,
and refreshing the grass of the field. In this, however, let us not
forget that they are the beneficent sons of _Sudhanvan_, the good
archer, and archers themselves, representatives of the great celestial
archer, of the thunder-dealing and rain-giving Indras; and that
therefore their sleep is only a figure of speech to express their
latent existence in darkness and the clouds of night.
But the _Rigvedas_ introduces the three brothers under other names,
and especially in one, and that an important aspect. The third brother
is called _Tritas_, or the third, and as such, is also identified with
Indras. Thus, for instance, the moments of Indras in the sky are
three--evening, night, and towards morning; and the horse of Tritas
(the horse that Tritas has received from _Yamas_) is now mysteriously
Yama himself, now the son of Âditis (whom we have already seen to be
the cow, or the son of the cow), now Tritas himself, whom Tritas alone
can yoke, and Indras alone ride upon, a horse bedewed with ambrosia,
which has three relationships in heaven, three in the waters, three in
the ocean;[60] that is to say, one relation is Yamas, the elder
brother; the second is the son of the cow, or the second brother; the
last is Tritas himself, or the youngest brother. This Tritas is called
intelligent; he therefore corresponds to the third brother, who makes
four cups out of one. How then does he appear sometimes stupid? The
language itself supplies the explanation. In Sanskrit, _bâlas_ means
both child and stolid; and the third brother is supposed to be stolid,
because, at his first appearance especially, he is a child,--and we
constantly see him as a child do wonderful things, and give proofs of
superhuman wisdom. With this key, the meaning of the myth is obvious.
The eldest brother, Yamas, the dying sun, with all his wisdom and
experience, is unable of himself to recover the ravished or missing
princess; the son of the cow Âditis, that is, Âdityas, the sun in the
middle of the night, gives often proof of strength great enough to
disperse the darkness and the clouds, and break the incantation; but,
generally it is the third sun, the morning sun, Indras in his third
moment, Vishnus taking his third step,[61] the third brother, Tritas,
who seems to obtain the victory, and deliver the young aurora from the
monster of night. All this seems to me to be very evident.
Tritas, like Indras, drinks the water of strength, and thereupon tears
the monster in pieces;[62] the victory of the young hero must be
achieved in the same way in which it is accomplished by Indras, his
more splendid and grandiose impersonation. But Tritas, or _Trâitanas_,
after having killed the monster of the waters, is afraid that the
waters themselves may devour him; after cutting off the head of the
monster, some enemies have lowered him down into the waters.[63] The
sun has vanquished the monster that kept the fountain of waters
shut--he has unchained the waters, but he himself has not been able to
break through the cloud; he has delivered from the dark and cloudy
monster the princess, the dawn that was to have been its prey, but he
himself does not yet come forth--is still invisible. Now, who are the
enemies here that have placed the young hero in the cistern, down into
the well, in the sea? We have already seen that Tritas has two
brothers; and it is these two brothers who, in a fit of jealousy, on
account of his wife, the aurora, and the riches she brings with her
from the realm of darkness, the cistern or well, detain their brother
in the well,--all which is told us in a single but eloquent verse of
the Vedas. The intelligent Tritas in the well calls out (_rebhati_) on
account of his brothers;[64] and the two horsemen of the twilight, the
Açvinâu, come to deliver the invoker (_rebhas_) covered and enveloped
by the waters.[65] In another hymn, the deliverer appears to be
Brihaspatis, the lord of prayer, who having heard how Tritas, thrust
down into the well, was invoking the gods, made the large from the
small;[66] that is to say, opened for the young hero a way to escape
from the well and show himself in his glory.
Having seen how in the Vedic hymns Tritas, the third brother, and the
ablest as well as best, is persecuted by his brothers, it is
interesting to note the form of the myth in popular Hindoo
tradition:--"Three brothers, _Ekatas_ (_i.e._, the first), _Dvitas_
(_i.e._, the second), and _Tritas_ (_i.e._, the third), were
travelling in a desert, and distressed with thirst, came to a well,
from which the youngest, Tritas, drew water and gave it to his
seniors. In requital, they threw him into the well, in order to
appropriate his property, and having covered the top with a
cart-wheel, left him within it. In this extremity he prayed to the
gods to extricate him, and by their favour he made his escape."[67]
Thus have we brought the three brothers, of whom Tritas is the
youngest, into close affinity with the three Ribhavas, and both the
former and the latter into an equally close connection with the three
moments of Indras. We have already said that the Ribhavas created the
cow; in the same way _Uçanâ Kâvyâs_, the desiring wise one protected
by Indras, another name for the sun-hero of the morning, sends the
cows together before him;[68] and Indras himself is the only lord of
the cows, the only real celestial shepherd;[69] or, rather, it is he
that begets the sun and the aurora,[70] or, as another hymn says, who
gives the horses and the sun and the cow of abundance.[71]
Here, therefore, the aurora is explicitly the cow of abundance; she is
still also the milk-giving and luminous cow, in which is found all
sweetness;[72] and finally, _usrâ_ or _ushâ_ are two words, two
appellations, which indiscriminately express aurora and cow as the red
or brilliant one. The identification of the aurora with the cow, in
the mythical sky of the Vedas, is therefore a certainty.
Another of the names which the milk-yielding cow assumes in the
_Rigvedas_, besides the ordinary one of _Ushâ_, is _Sîtâ_, whom Indras
also causes to descend from heaven, like the aurora, and who must be
milked by the sun-god _Pûshan_,[73] the nourisher, the _foecundator_,
compared in one hymn to a pugnacious buffalo.[74] This Indras,
protector and friend of Sîtâ, prepares therefore Vishnus, the
protector, in the form of Râmas, of his wife Sîtâ. And even the
Ribhavas are the protectors of the cow, as well as the producers.[75]
But Indras, whose special function it is to lighten, to thunder, to
fight the monster of darkness, and to prepare the light, generally
figures in the popular imagination, at dawn (aurora), as the sun,
under his three names of _Sûryas_, of _Ritas_, and of _Savitar_.
The sun, with respect to the aurora, is now the father, now the
husband, now the son, and now the brother. As begotten of Indras
simultaneously with the aurora, he is the brother; as following and
embracing the aurora, he is the husband; as simply coming after the
aurora, he is the son; and as sending the cow or the aurora before
him, he is the father. These four relationships of the sun to the
aurora or dawn are all mentioned in the _Rigvedas_.
In one of the hymns, the pure effulgence with which the aurora chases
away the shadows of night is said to resemble the milk of a cow;[76]
that is, the whitish light of the daybreak precedes in the eastern
heavens the rosy light of aurora. The aurora is the cow-nurse, and the
oriental mother of the old sun; at the sound of the hymn in praise of
the dawn, the two horsemen of twilight, the Açvinâu, awaken.[77] Two
cows--[_i.e._, the two twilights, that of the evening and that of the
morning, related to the two horsemen, the evening one and the morning
one, whom we also find together in the morning, the one white and the
other red, the one in company with daybreak and the other with the
aurora, and who may therefore be sometimes identified with the two
morning dawns, the white dawn (alba) or daybreak, and the red dawn
(aurora), and, from another point of view, the lunar dawn and the
solar one]--drop milk towards the sun, in the heaven.[78] The aurora
is the mother of the cows.[79]
As the sun approaches, the heavenly cows, who walk without covering
themselves with dust, celebrate him[80] with songs. The red rays of the
high sun fly and join themselves to the sun's cows.[81] The seven wise
_Añgirasas_ (the seven solar rays, or else the Angiras, the seven-rayed
or seven-faced sun, as another hymn[82] represents him) celebrate in
their songs the herds of cows which belong to the aurora, who appears
upon the mountain.[83] Let us notice more particularly what is said of
the aurora that appears with the cows upon the mountain. It is the sun
that enables the Añgirasas to split the mountain, to bellow along with
the cows, and to surround themselves with the splendour of the
aurora.[84] The aurora, the daughter of the sky, the splendid one,
appears; at the same time, the sun draws up the cows.[85] The aurora is
carried by red luminous cows, whilst the sun, the hero-archer, kills
the enemies.[86] The aurora breaks open the prison of the cows; the cows
exult towards the aurora;[87] the aurora comes out of the darkness as
cows come out of their stable.[88] As the solar hero, Indras, is the
guardian or shepherd of horses and of cows,[89] so the auroras are often
celebrated in the _Rigvedas_ as _açvâvatîs_ and _gomatîs_, that is, as
provided with and attended by horses and cows. The aurora keeps together
the herd of red cows, and always accompanies them.[90]
Thus have we passed from the pastor-hero to the pastoral heroine upon
the mountain. The pastoral aurora, unveiling her body in the east,
follows the path of the sun;[91] and the sun is represented to us in
the following riddle as a wonderful cowherd:--"I have seen a shepherd
who never set down his foot, and yet went and disappeared on the
roads; and who, taking the same and yet different roads, goes round
and round amidst the worlds."[92] The sun goes round in the ether, and
never puts down a foot, for he has none; and he takes the same, yet
different, roads in the sky, _i.e._, luminous by day, and gloomy by
night. The puzzle of the riddle lies in its self-contradiction; and
the beautiful girl is the prize appointed for him who, by his actions,
resolves it. A similar riddle is, in the _Rigvedas_ itself, proposed
to _Mitras_, the sun, and to _Varunas_, the night. The riddle is as
follows:--"The first of them who walk afoot (_padvatînam_) comes
without feet (_apâd_);" and the two divine heroes are asked, "Which of
you two has guessed it?"[93] He who solves this enigma we may be sure
is Mitras, the sun, who recognises the aurora, the girl who comes
making use of feet, although she seem to have none, for she comes
borne in a chariot, of which the wheels appear to be feet, which is
the same luminous chariot that rolls well,[94] given by the Ribhavas
to the two horsemen Açvinâu (represented sometimes as two old men made
young again by the Ribhavas, and sometimes simply as two handsome
youths), into which chariot she mounts by the help of the Açvinâu; and
the daughter of the sun is, in the race, the first to come to the
winning-post, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of the gods.[95] Then the
hymns to the aurora sometimes represent that vast chariot as belonging
to the eastern aurora, who guides a hundred chariots, and who, in
turn, helps the immortal gods to ascend into the chariot beside
her.[96] The aurora, as the first of those who appear every day in the
eastern sky, as the first to know the break of day,[97] is naturally
represented as one of the swiftest among those who are the guests of
the sun-prince during the night; and like her cows, which do not cover
themselves with dust (this being an attribute which, in the Indian
faith, distinguishes the gods from mortals, for the former walk in the
heavens, and the latter upon earth), she, in her onward flight, leaves
no footsteps behind her. The word _apâd_ (_pad_ and _pada_, being
synonymous) may, indeed, mean not only she who has no feet, but also
she who has no footsteps (that is, what is the measure of the foot),
or, again, she who has no slippers, the aurora having, as appears,
lost them; for the prince Mitras, while following the beautiful young
girl, finds a slipper which shows her footstep, the measure of her
foot, a foot so small, that no other woman has a foot like it, an
almost unfindable, almost imperceptible foot, which brings us back
again to the idea of her who has no feet. The legend of the lost
slipper, and of the prince who tries to find the foot predestined to
wear it, the central interest in the popular story of Cinderella,
seems to me to repose entirely upon the double meaning of the word
_apâd_, _i.e._, who has no feet, or what is the measure of the foot,
which may be either the footstep or the slipper; often, moreover, in
the story of Cinderella, the prince cannot overtake the fugitive,
because a chariot bears her away.
The word _apâd_, which we have heretofore seen applied to the heroine,
was applied, moreover, to the hero, giving rise to another popular
legend, of which the _Rigvedas_ offers us the mythical elements. We have
already seen the sun as _anipadyamanas_, _i.e._, the sun who never puts
his foot down; but this sun who never puts down his foot easily, came to
be conceived of and represented as a sun without feet, or as a lame
hero, who, during the night, by the perfidy of the witch, the dusk of
evening, became also blind. In one hymn, the blind and the lame are not
one, but two, whom propitious Indras guides;[98] in another, the
blind-lame is one person, with the name of _Pâravrig_, whom the two
horsemen Açvinâu, the two friends of the dawn, enable to walk and to
see.[99] The lame one who sees, shows the way to the blind who is able
to walk, or the lame carries the blind; Indras, the hidden sun, guides
the blind and the lame; or, the blind and the lame, lost in the forest,
help each other; in the morning, the Açvinâu, the two horsemen, friends
of the aurora, with the water of sight and of strength (that is,
Páravrig, the blind-lame having discovered the hidden fountain of the
young girls of the dawn,[100] with the ambrosia of the aurora, with the
aurora itself), make the blind see, and him who has no feet, the lame,
walk; that is, they burst forth into the upper air again, transfigured
now into the luminous sun who sets out on his heavenly voyage. I have
said above that the hero becomes blind and lame through the perfidy and
magic of the evening aurora: nor was the assertion unfounded; for the
Vedic hymn in which Indras guides the blind and the lame, _i.e._,
himself or the sun, in the gloomy tardy night, is the very same hymn in
which is celebrated his heroic and manly enterprise of the destruction
of the daughter of the sky. The sun Indras revenges himself in the
morning upon the aurora of the morning, for the wrong done him by the
aurora of the evening, beautiful, but faithless.
For the aurora counts among her other talents that of magic; when the
Ribhavas created the aurora cow of morning, investing her with the
skin of the aurora cow of evening, they endowed her with Protean
qualities (_Viçvarûpâm_), and on this account the aurora herself is
also called witch or enchantress (_Mâjinî_).[101] This aurora, this
virago, this Amazon, this Vedic Medea, who, treacherously plunging her
husband, or brother, the solar hero, into a fiery furnace, blinds and
lames him, is punished in the morning for her crime of the evening.
The hero vanquishes her, overcomes her incantations, and annihilates
her. The Vedic hymn sings--"A manly and heroic undertaking thou hast
accomplished, O Indras, for an evil-doing woman, the daughter of the
heavens, thou hast smitten; the growing daughter of the heaven, the
aurora, O Indras, thou hast destroyed; from the chariot, broken in
pieces, fell the aurora, trembling, because the bull had struck
her."[102] Here the mythical animal reappears on the same stage with
the heroes, and for the image of the hero and the heroine there is
substituted that of the cow and the bull.[103]
The sun and the aurora, therefore, do not always seek each other from
promptings of affection only, nor is the hateful part always played by
the aurora. The sun, also appears as a perverse persecutor in his
turn. One Vedic hymn advises the aurora not to stretch out the web
she works at too far, lest the sun, like a robber, with hostile
intention, set fire to and burn her.[104] Another hymn tells us that
the handsome one follows the beautiful one, the brother the sister,
like a lover,[105]--the aurora fleeing from the sun, her brother, out
of shame, and her brother following her, actuated by a brutal
instinct. Finally, a third hymn shows us the Vedic Vulcan, the
blacksmith of the gods, the sun Tvashtar, called also the omniform sun
(_Sâvitâ Viçvarûpah_), as father of Saranyû, another name for the
aurora, omniform herself, like her father (and, like the cow,
undergoing the triple transmutation at the hands of Tvashtar, _i.e._,
the three brothers, the Ribhavas), creating another form of himself,
that is, the sun _Vivasvant_, to be able to espouse the aurora.
Saranyû, perceiving perhaps that Vivasvant is her father under another
shape, creates another woman like herself, and flees away on the
chariot that flies of itself, and that was before given her by her
father; and thereupon Vivasvant, in order to overtake her, transforms
himself into a horse.[106]
But sometimes the alienation the sun and the aurora, the young husband
and wife, is not due to evil propensities in themselves, but the
decree of fate working through the machinations of monsters. The two
beautiful ones are at bottom united by love and reciprocal gratitude;
for now it is the sun who delivers the aurora, and now the aurora who
liberates the sun; and we have already seen the aurora making the
ambrosial milk drop for the sun from her cows, and the sun drawing up
and delivering the cows of the aurora. There is a hymn in which the
divine girl, the aurora, comes up in the east, with a lascivious air,
smiling, fresh, uncovering her bosom, resplendent, towards the god who
sacrifices himself,[107] that is to say, towards the sun, towards
_Çunahçepas_ (the sun), who, in three verses of another hymn,[108]
invokes her, the well-known legend of which, narrated in the
_Âitareya-Brâhmanam_, I shall briefly relate. The aurora has also the
merit of having, with her pure and purifying light, opened the gates
of the gloomy cavern, discomfited the enemies, the shades of night,
and exposed to view the treasures hidden by the darkness (and here we
have Medea again, but this time in a benignant form); she awakens to
activity the sleepers and everything with life (and therefore, among
the living sleepers, the sun, her son, whom one of the hymns
represents as sleeping profoundly in the bosom of the darkness of
night); she is the saviour of mortals,[109] that is to say, she
protects mortals from death, and resuscitates them; she sees and
foresees everything.[110] The awakener is also the awakened; the
illuminator is also the illumined, or the wise; and the illumined or
luminous one is also the beautiful one. From being small, she is
become large[111] (the heroes and heroines of mythology are only small
at birth, and pass at once into fulness of stature); from being infirm
and sombre-visaged, by the grace of Indras and of the Açvinâu, she is
cured and restored to strength and clearness.[112] But why was she
dark at first? Because her mother, the night, is the black one; she,
the white one, is born of the black one.[113]
During the night, the young girl was blind, and she recovers her sight
by the grace of a wise one, one who, protected by Indras, another
shape of Indras, has become enamoured of her. We have seen above that
it is the Açvinâu who, with the aurora, give back to the sun his
sight; here it is the sun who makes the aurora see, it is the sun who
gives her light; and she who, having been blind, recovers her sight,
becomes the protectress of the blind and preserver of vision,[114]
like St Lucia, virgin and martyr, in the Christian Mythology. Physical
truth and the mythical narration are in perfect accordance.
The night is now the mother, now the sister of the aurora; but the
gloomy night is sometimes her step-mother, sometimes her half-sister.
There is a riddle which celebrates the luminous night and the aurora,
as two diversely beautiful ones who go together, but of whom one goes
while the other comes.[115] Another hymn sings of them thus: "The
brilliantly-decked one approaches, the white aurora comes; the black
one prepares for her her rooms. The one immortal having joined the
other, the two appear alternately in the heavens. One and eternal is
the path of the two sisters; they follow it, one after the other,
guided by the gods; they do not meet, and they never stand still--the
two good nurses, night and aurora, one in soul yet different in
form."[116] The two good nurses, night and aurora, whose hues
alternate eternally, nourish between them one and the same child (the
sun).[117] But the _Rigvedas_ itself tells us that the night is not
always the legitimate sister of the aurora; the latter "abandons now
the one that is, now the one that is not, properly its sister."[118]
Here probably we must understand by the proper sister of the aurora
the luminous or moonlight night, and by the half-sister, the gloomy
night, the night without a moon. This is the sister whom, in a hymn,
the aurora removes, sends far away from her, while she shines to be
seen of her husband;[119] and her half-sister, the night, is obliged
to resign her place to her elder or better sister,[120] the word
_gyeshthas_ meaning not only the eldest, but the best. We have
already seen that the aurora is the first to appear; as such, and as
she who in the evening precedes the night (the evening aurora), she is
the first-born, the eldest, the most experienced, the best; while,
from another point of view, she is represented to us as the little one
who becomes great, and, in this case, as younger sister of the night
(the morning dawn). The dawns, or auroras, are saluted with the
epithet of workwomen,[121] just as the good sister, with respect to
the bad one, is always she who works, doing wonderful work, that is,
spinning or weaving the rosy cloth. But the auroras are not only the
workers, they are also the pure purifying and cleansing ones;[122]
hence one can understand how one of the tasks imposed upon the
youngest sister was that of purifying, purging, or separating the
grain during the night, taking from it all that is impure, in which
task she is assisted sometimes by a good fairy, sometimes by the
Virgin Mary, who, according to all probability, is the moon.
One of the singular qualities of the younger sister is that she
displays her beauty only before the eyes of her husband. The wife
aurora manifests herself in the sight of her husband;[123] united, in
her splendour, with the rays of the sun,[124] like a wife she prepares
the dwelling of the sun.[125] Very brilliant, like a wife cleansed by
her mother, she uncovers her body;[126] like a bather who shows
herself, the shining one unveils her body;[127] she adorns herself
like a dancer, uncovering, like a cow, her breast;[128] she displays
her luminous garments;[129] all-radiant, with beautiful face, she
laughs;[130] and he who has made the aurora laugh, her, the beautiful
princess, who, at first, that is, during the night, did not laugh,
espouses her; the sun espouses the aurora.
The celestial nuptials take place, and the ceremony is minutely
described in the 85th hymn of the 10th book of the _Rigvedas_. But the
marriage of the two celestials is never consummated except under
conditions; these conditions are always accepted and afterwards
forgotten, and it is now the husband who, by forsaking his wife, now
the wife who, by abandoning her husband, violates the promise given.
One of these estrangements, these temporary alienations of husband and
wife, is described in the _Rigvedas_ by the poetical myth of the dawn
_Urvaçî_ and her husband _Purûravas_, one of the names given to the
sun. Urvaçî says of herself, "I have arrived like the first of the
auroras;"[131] thereupon Urvaçî suddenly abandons her husband
Purûravas, because he breaks an agreement made between them. We shall
see further on in this chapter what this agreement was. Besides,
having given him a son before her departure, she consoles him by
permitting him to come and find her again in heaven, that is, by
endowing the sun with the immortality she possesses herself. In the
morning the aurora precedes the sun; he follows her too closely, and
she disappears, but leaves a son, _i.e._, the new sun. In the evening
the aurora precedes the sun; he follows her again, and she loses
herself, now in a forest, now in the sea. The same phenomenon, a
divorce of husband from wife, or a separation of brother and sister,
or the flight of a sister from her brother, or again, that of a
daughter from her father, presents itself twice every day (and every
year) in the sky. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is a witch, or the
monster of nocturnal darkness, who takes the place of the radiant
bride, or the aurora, near the sun; and in that case the aurora, the
beauteous bride, is spirited away into a wood to be killed or thrown
into the sea, from both of which predicaments, however, she always
escapes. Sometimes the witch of night throws the brother and sister,
the mother and son, the sun and the aurora, together into the waves of
the sea, whence they both escape again, to reappear in the morning.
All these alternative variations of a mythical representation become
each in turn a legend by itself, as we shall see again more in detail,
when the study of the different animals that take part in them shall
furnish us with opportunities of doing so. In the meantime, we have
here finished our enumeration of all that in the hymns of the
_Rigvedas_ refers in any way to the bull and the cow,--to the wind,
moon, and sun bulls, to the cow-cloud, moon, spring and
aurora,--leaving it, however, to be understood how natural it is to
pass from the bull to the handsome hero-prince, and from the cow to
the beautiful girl, the rich princess, the valiant heroine, or the
wise fairy. For though in the mythical hymns of the _Rigvedas_ we have
little more than hints or foreshadows of the many popular legends
which we have thus referred to, often without naming them, these are
so many and so precise that it seems to me to be almost impossible
not to recognise them. To demonstrate this, however, it will be
necessary for me to show further what form the mythological ideas and
figures relating to the animals dispersed in the Vedic hymns
afterwards assumed in the Hindoo traditions.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mâ gâm anâgâm aditim vadhishta; _Rigv._ viii. 90, 15.
[2] Gomâtarah; _Rigv._ i. 8, 1, 3.--Aditis, called "mâtâ rudrânâm;"
_Rigv._ viii. 90, 15.
[3] Tubhyam (to Vâyus, to the wind), dhenuh sabardughâ viçvâ vasûni
dohate aganayo maruto vakshanâbhyah; _Rigv._ i. 134, 4.
[4] Imâs ta indra priçnayo ghritam duhata âçiram; _Rigv._ viii. 6,
19.--Trir asmâi sapta dhenavo duduhre satyâm âçiram pûrvye vyomani;
_Rigv._ ix. 70, 1.--Trîni sarânsi priçnayo duduhre vagrine madhu;
_Rigv._ viii. 7, 10.--In the _Râmâyanan_, i. 48, the Marutas also
appear in the number of 7.
[5] Pra çansâ goshv aghnyam krîlam yac chardho mârutam gambhe rasasya
vâvridhe; _Rigv._ i. 37, 5.
[6] Ime ye te su vâyo bâhvogaso 'ntar nadî te patayanty ukshano mahi
vrâdhanta ukshanah dhanvan cid ye anâçavo girâç, cid agirâukasah
sûryasyeva raçmayo durniyantavo hastayor durniyantavah; _Rigv._ i.
135, 9.
[7] Riksho na vo marutah çimîvân amo dudhro gâur iva bhîmayuh; _Rigv._
v. 56, 3.
[8] Te syandrâso nokshano 'ti shkandanti çarvarîh; _Rigv._ v. 52, 3.
[9] Tvam vâtâir arunâir yâsi; _Tâittiriya Yagurvedas_, i. 3,
14.--Angibhir vy ânagre ke cid usrâ iva stribhih; _Rigv._ i. 87, 1.
[10] Vrishâ vrishabhih; _Rigv._ i. 100, 4.--Grishtih sasûva sthaviram
tavâgâm anâdhrishyam vrishabham tumram indram; _Rigv._ iv. 18,
10.--Sa mâtarâ na dadriçâna usriyo nânadad eti marutâm iva svanah;
_Rigv._ ix. 70, 6.
[11] Vrishâyamâno vrinita somam; _Rigv._ i. 32, 3.--Pitum nu stosham
maho dharmânam tavishîm yasya trito (Tritas, as we shall see, is an
_alter ego_ of the god Indras) vy ogasâ vritram viparvam ardayat;
_Rigv._ i. 187, 1.
[12] Pibâ vardhasva; _Rigv._ iii. 36, 3.
[13] Indro madhu sambhritam usriyâyâm padvad viveda çaphavan name goh;
_Rigv._ iii. 39, 6.
[14] Trî yac chatâ mahishânâm agho mâs trî sarânsi maghavâ somyâpâh
kâram na viçve ahvanta devâ bharam indrâya yad ahim gaghâna; _Rigv._
v. 29, 8.
[15] Vasoh kabandhamrishabho bibharti; _Atharvavedas_, ix. 4, 3.
[16] Sruvati bhîmo vrishabhas tavishyayâ çriñge çiçâno harinî
vicakshanah; _Rigv._ ix. 70, 7.
[17] Yas tigmaçriñgo vrishabho na bhîma ekah krishtîç cyâvayati pra
viçvâh; _Rigv._ vii. 19, 1.--Idam namo vrishabhâya svarâge
satyaçushmâya tavase 'vâci; _Rigv._ i. 51, 15.
[18] Çiçîte vagram tegase na vansagah; _Rigv._ i. 55, 1.
[19] Abhy enam vagra âyasah sahasrabhrishtir âyatârcano; _Rigv._ i.
80, 12.
[20] Sahasraçriñgo vrishabho yah samudrâd udâcarat; _Rigv._ vii. 55, 7.
[21] Vi tigmena vrishabhena puro 'bhet; _Rigv._ i. 33, 13.
[22] Priyâ indrasya dhenavo vagram hinvanti sâyakam vasvîh; _Rigv._ i.
84, 10, 11, 12. The root, HI, properly signifies to _distend, draw
out_; here, to _draw out_ the arm of Indras seems to me to mean to
elongate it, to render it as fine as a thread--to sharpen it (in
Italian, _affilare_); the cows that sharpen (It. _affilanti_), are a
variety of the cows that _spin_ (It. _filanti_).
[23] Yugam vagram vrishabhaç cakra indro nir gyotishâ tamaso gâ
adukshat; _Rigv._ i. 33, 10.
[24] Çiçîte çriñge rakshase vinikshe; _Rigv._ v. 2, 9.--Catvâri çriñgâ
trayo asya pâdâ dve çîrshe sapta hastâso asya; _Rigv._ iv. 58,
3.--Tapurgambho vana â vâtacodito yûthe na sâhvân ava vâti vansagah
abhi vragann akshitam pâgasâ ragah sthâtuç caratham bhayate
patatrinah; _Rigv._ i. 58, 5. In this stanza, however, _Vansagah_ may
probably signify rather _the stallion_ than _the bull_, as we find in
the second stanza this same Agnis already compared to a radiant horse
(atyo na prishtham prushitasya rocate).
[25] _Adris_ and _parvatas_ properly mean mountain, but, in the Vedâs,
often cloud; and among their many meanings there is also that of tree;
_agas_ (properly that which does not move) expresses equally tree and
mountain. Hence perhaps the Italian proverb: _Le montagne stanno
ferme, ma gli uomini s'incontrano_, Mountains stand still, but men
meet; hence the cry of Râmas in the _Râmâyanam_, ii. 122, that the
Himâlayas would move before he should become a traitor; hence the
assurance with which Macbeth, after the celebrated prophecy of the
witches, can say: "That will never be; who can impress the forest; bid
the tree unfix his earth-bound root?" _Shakespeare_ (_Macbeth_, iv.
1.) Nevertheless the forest moved, as it not unfrequently does in the
myths, where the tree-clouds walk, and fill all with terror wherever
they go, where heroes and monsters often fight, by unrooting the trees
of a whole forest. Cfr. _Râmâyanam_, iii. 3, 5, and the chapters of
this work which treat of the Horse, the Bear, and the Monkey.
[26] Vragam gacha gosthânam; _Tâittir. Yagúr._ i. 1, 9; cfr.
_Çatapathabrâhmanam_, i. 2, 3, 4.
[27] Krishno nonâva vrishabhah; _Rigv._ i. 79, 2.--Vâçreva vidyun
mimâti vatsam na mâtâ sishakti; _Rigv._ i. 38, 8.
[28] Açmânam cit svaryam parvatam girim pra cyâvayanti yâmabhih;
_Rigv._ v. 96, 4.
[29] Pavyâ rathânâm adrim bhindanty ogasâ; _Rigv._ v. 52, 9. _Pavis_, in
general, is the iron part, the iron end (of a dart, or a lance); here it
would appear to be the iron tire of the chariot's wheels, which, driving
furiously over the mountain, break it,--thunder, in fact, often suggests
the idea of a noisy chariot making ruin in heaven.
[30] Vîrah karmanyah sudaksho yuktagrâvâ gâyate devakâmah; _Rigv._
iii. 4, 9.
[31] Ayam çrinve adha gayann uta ghnann ayam uta pra krinute yudhâ gâh;
_Rigv._ iv. 17, 10.--Vilu cid ârugatnubhir guhâ cid indra vahnibhih
avinda usriyâ anu; _Rigv._ i. 6, 5.--Tvam valasya gomato 'pavar adrivo
bilam; _Rigv._ i. 11, 5.--Vi gobhir adrim âirayat; _Rigv._ i. 7,
3.--Ukshâ mimâti prati yanti dhenavah; _Rigv._ ix. 69, 4.--Yad anyâsu
vrishabho roravîti so anyasmin yûthe ni dadhâti retah; _Rigv._ iii. 55,
17.--Pûshanvân vagrint sam u patnyâmadah; _Rigv._ i. 82, 6.
[32] Indrâgnî navatim puro dâsapatnîr adhûnutam sâkam ekena karmanâ;
_Rigv._ iii. 12, 6; _Tâitt. Yagurv._ i. 1, 14. Cfr. chap. on Serpent.
[33] Devâsa âyan paraçûnr abibhran vanâ vriçcanto abhi vidbhir âyan ni
sudrvam dadhato vakshanâsu yatrâ kripîtam anu tad dahanti; _Rigv._ x.
28, 8.
[34] Cfr. the chapter on the Bear and the Monkey.
[35] Vrikshe-vrikshe niyatâ mîmayad gâus tato vayah pra patân
pûrushâdah viçvam bhuvanam bhayâte; _Rigv._ x. 27, 22.--Tvam âyasam
prati vartayo gor divo açmânam; _Rigv._ i. 121, 9.
[36] Brihaspatir govapusho valasya nir maggânam na parvano gabhâra;
_Rigv._ x. 68, 9.
[37] Gâurîr mimâya salilâni takshaty ekapadî dvipadî sâ
catushpadî--ashtâpadî navapadî babhûvushî sahasrâksharâ parame vyoman;
_Rigv._ i. 164, 41.
[38] Utâdah parushe gavi sûraç cakram hiranyayam; _Rigv._ vi. 56, 3.
[39] Dâsapatnîr ahigopâ atishthan niruddhâ âpah panineva gâvah;
_Rigv._ i. 32, 11.
[40] Visham gavâm yâtudhânah pibantu; _Rigv._ x. 87, 18. The same
passage can, however, be also translated: "The demons of the cows may
drink the poison."
[41] _Rigv._ iii. 12, 6; x. 27, 22.
[42] _Rigv._ ix. 70, 1.
[43] viii. 6, 19. Cfr. the chapters on the Horse and the Cuckoo.
[44] Vi raçmibhih sasrige sûryo gâh; _Rigv._ vii. 36, 1.
[45] Ta vâm (the gods Vishnus and Indras) vâstûny uçmasi gama-dhyâi
yatra gâvo bhûriçriñgâ ayâsah; _Rigv._ i. 154, 6. Here all the stars
or cows together form _many horns_; but perhaps each star or cow in
itself was supposed to have but _one horn_; for the stars, like the
moon, shed but one ray of light, but one light. This, it appears to
me, may be inferred from the name of _Ekaçriñgâs_ or _unicorns_,
given, in the later mythology of the Indians, to an entire order of
Mani, of whom the stars are represented as the supreme habitations,
and even purest forms.
[46] Kanyâ vâr avâyatî somam api srutâvidat astam bharanty abravîd
indrâya sunavâi tvâ çakrâya sunavâi tvâ.--Indrâyendo pari srava;
_Rigv._ viii. 80, 1, 3.
[47] Indrâsomâ tapatam raksha ubgatam ny arpayatam vrishanâ
tamovridhah; _Rigv._ vii, 104, 1.--The following stanzas reproduce and
develop the same argument.
[48] Pancokshano madhye tasthur maho divah--Te sedhanti patho vrikam
tarantam yahvatîr apah; _Rigv._ i. 105, 10, 11.
[49] Vasavo gâuryam cit padi shitâm amuncatâ yagtrâh; _Rigv._ iv. 12, 6.
[50] Takshan dhenum sabardugham; _Rigv._ i. 20, 3.--Niç carmano gâm
arinîta dhîtibhih; _Rigv._ i. 161, 7, e, iv. 36, 4.
[51] This interesting particular is more fully developed in the
chapters which treat of the Wolf, the Pig and the Wild Boar, _q.
v._--To avoid useless and troublesome repetitions, I must observe here
that the myths of morning and evening are often applied to spring and
autumn, and the myths of night to winter.
[52] Rayim ribhavah sarvavîram â takshata vrishano mandasânâh; _Rigv._
iv. 35, 6.
[53] Rayim ribhavas takshatâ vayah; _Rigv._ iv. 36, 8.--Here again we
have the cow in relation to the birds, since the riches given by the
Ribhavas consist above all in cows. (Ye gomantam vâgavantam suvîram
rayim dhattha vasumantam purukshum te agrepâ ribhavo mandasânâ asme
dhatta ye ca râtim grinanti; _Rigv._ iv. 34, 10.)
[54] Çayave cin nâsâtyâ çacibhir gasuraye staryam pipyathur gâm;
_Rigv._ i. 116. 22.--Yâ garantâ yuvaçâ tâkrinotana; _Rigv._ i. 161, 7.
[55] Gyeshtha âha camasâ dvâ kareti kanîyân trîn krinavâmety âha
kanishtha âha caturas kareti tvashta ribhavas tat panayad vaco vah;
_Rigv._ iv. 33, 5.
[56] Vâgo devânâm abhavat sukarmendrasya ribhukshâ varunasya vibhvâ;
_Rigv._ iv. 33, 9.
[57] Te vâgo vibhvân ribhur indravantah; _Rigv._ iv. 33, 3.
[58] Ribhur vibhvâ vâga indro no achemam yagnam ratnadheyopa yâta;
_Rigv._ iv. 34, 1.--Pibata vâgâ ribhavo; _Rigv._ iv. 34, 4.
[59] Dvâdaça dyûn yad agohyasyâtithye ranann ribhavah sasantah
sukshetrâkrinvann anayanta sindhûn dhanvâtishthann oshadhîr nimnam
âpah; _Rigv._ iv. 33, 7.--Cfr. _Rigv._ i. 161, 11-13.
[60] Yamena dattam trita enam âyunag indra enam prathamo adhy
atishthat; _Rigv._ i. 163, 2.--Asi yamo asy âdityo arvann asi trito
guhyena vratena asi somena samayâ viprikta âhus te trîni divi
bandhanâni trîni ta âhur divi bandhanâni trîny apsu trîny antah
samudre; _Rigv._ i. 163, 3, 4.
[61] Vishnus the three-faced is already spoken of in the _Rigvedas_
and in the _Yagurvedas_. The third step of Vishnus is taken among the
cows with the great or many horns: Gamadhye gâvo yatra bhûri-çriñgâ
ayâsah atrâ 'ha tad urugâyasya vishnoh paramam padam ava bhâti bhûreh;
_Tâittiriya Yagurv._ i. 3, 6.
[62] _Rigv._ i. 187, 1, the passage already cited, when speaking of
the water of strength.
[63] Na mâ garan nadyo mâtritamâ dâsâ yad îm susamubdham avâdhuh çiro
yad asya trâitano vitakshat; _Rigv._ i. 158, 5. We shall have occasion
to return more than once to an analogous myth referring to Indras.
[64] Tritas tad vedâptyah sa gâmitvâya rebhati; _Rigv._ i. 105,
9.--_Gâmitvâ_ is properly the relation of brotherhood, and also
relationship in general. _Rebhas_, or the invoker, represented as a
hero, is no other than our _Trita âptyas_.
[65] Rebham nivritam sitam adbhyah; _Rigv._ i. 112, 5.
[66] Tritah kûpe 'vahito devân havata ûtaye tac chuçrâva brihaspatih
krinvann anhûranâd uru; _Rigv._ i. 105, 17.
[67] _Nîtimangarî_, quoted by Wilson, _Rigvedas-Samhitâ_, vol. i.
[68] Â gâ âgad uçanâ kâvyah sacâ; _Rigv._ i. 83, 5.
[69] Patir gavâm abhavad eka indrah; _Rigv._ iii. 31, 4.
[70] Gagâna sûryam ushâsam; _Rigv._ iii. 32, 8.
[71] Sasânâtyân uta sûryam sasânendrah sasâna purubhogasam gâm;
_Rigv._ iii. 34, 9.
[72] Mahi gyotir nihitam vakshanâsu âmâ pakvam carati bibhratî gâuh
viçvam svâdma sambhritam usriyâyâm; _Rigv._ iii. 30, 14.
[73] Indrah sîtâm ni grihnâtu tâm pûshânu yachatu sâ nah payasvatî
duhâm uttarâm-uttarâm samâm; _Rigv._ iv. 57, 7.
[74] Mridha ushtro na; _Rigv._ i. 138, 2.
[75] Yat samvatsam ribhavo gâm arakshan yat samvatsam ribhavo mâ
apinçan; _Rigv._ iv. 33, 4.
[76] Ushâ nâ râmîr arunâir apornute maho gyotishâ çucatâ goarnasâ;
_Rigv._ ii. 34, 12.
[77] Dhenuh pratnasya kâmyam duhânântah putraç carati dakshinâyâhâ
dyotanim vahati çubhrayâmoshasah stomo açvinâv agigah; _Rigv._ iii.
58, 1.
[78] Ritâya dhenû parame duhâte; _Rigv._ iv. 23, 10.
[79] Gavâm mâtâ; _Rigv._ v. 45, 2.
[80] Arenâvas tuga â sadman dhenavah svaranti tâ uparatâti sûryam;
_Rigv._ i. 151, 5.
[81] Ud apaptann arunâ bhânavo vrithâ svâyugo arushîr gâ ayukshata;
_Rigv._ i. 92, 2
[82] Yenâ navagve añgire daçagve saptâsye revatî revad ûsha; _Rigv._
iv. 51, 4.--The sun is also said to be drawn by seven fair horses;
_Rigv._ i. 50, 9.--Cfr. the following chapter.
[83] Ta usho adrisâno gotrâ gavâm añgiraso grinanti; _Rigv._ vi. 65, 5.
[84] Ritenâdrim vy asan bhidantah sam añgiraso navanta gobhih çûnam
narah pari shadann ushâsam; _Rigv._ iv. 3, 11.
[85] Praty u adarçy âyaty uchantî duhitâ divah--Ud usriyâh srigate
sûryah sacâ; _Rigv._ vii. 81, 1, 2.
[86] Vahanti sîm arunâso ruçanto gâvah subhagâm urviyâ prathânâm
apegate çûro asteva çatrûn bâdhate; _Rigv._ vi. 64, 3.
[87] Rugad drilhâni dadad usriyânâm prati gâva ushasam vâvaçanta;
_Rigv._ vii. 75, 7.
[88] Gâvo na vragam vy ushâ avar tamah; _Rigv._ i. 92, 4.
[89] Yo açvânâm yo gavâm gopatih; _Rigv._ i. 101, 4.
[90] Yuñkte gavâm arunânâm anîkam; _Rigv._ i. 124, 11.--Esha gobhir
arunebhir yugânâ; _Rigv._ v. 80, 3.
[91] Avishk Krinvânâ tanvam purastat ritasya panthâm anv eti; _Rigv._
v. 80, 4.
[92] Apaçyam gopâm anipadyamânam â ca parâ ca pathibhiç carantam sa
sadhrîcîh sa vishûcir vasâna â varîvarti bhuvaneshv antah; _Rigv._ x.
177, 3.
[93] Apâd eti prathamâ padvatînâm kas tad vâm ciketa; _Rigv._ i. 152, 3.
[94] Ratham ye cakruh suvritam; _Rigv._ iv. 33, 8.--Takshan
nâsatyâbhyâm parigmânam sukham ratham; _Rigv._ i. 20, 3.
[95] Yuvo ratham duhitâ sûryasya saha çriyâ nâsatyâvrinîta; _Rigv._ i.
117, 13.--Â vâm ratham duhitâ sûryasya kârshmevâtishthad arvatâ
gayantî viçve devâ anv amanyanta hridbhih; _Rigv._ i. 116, 17.
[96] Yuktvâ ratham upa devân ayâtana; _Rigv._ i. 161, 7.--Prithû ratho
dakshinâyâ ayogy âenam devâso amritâso asthuh; _Rigv._ i. 123,
1.--Devî girâ rathânâm; _Rigv._ i. 48, 3.--Çatam rathebhih subhagoshâ
iyam vi yâty abhi mânushân; _Rigv._ i. 48, 7.
[97] Gânaty ahnah prathamasya; _Rigv._ i. 123, 9.
[98] Anu dvâ gahitâ nayo 'ndham çronam ca vritrahan; _Rigv._ iv. 30, 19.
[99] Sakhâbhûd açvinor ushâh; _Rigv._ iv. 52, 2.--Parâvrigam prandham
çronam cakshasa etave krithah; _Rigv._ i. 112, 8.--I here explicitly
abandon the hypothesis I advanced six years ago in the "Life and
Miracles of the God Indras in the Rigvedas," pp. 22 and 24, to the
effect that the hero Pâravrig is the lightning flashing from the dark
cloud; whereas the blind-lame seems now to me the sun in the darkness
of night or winter.
[100] Sa vidvân apagoham kanînâm âvir bhavann udatishthat parâvrik
prati çronah sthâd vy anag acashta; _Rigv._ ii. 15, 7.
[101] _Rigv._ v. 48, 1.
[102] Etad ghed uta vîryam indra cakartha pâunsyam striyam yad durhanâ
yuvam vadhîr duhitaram divah divaç cid ghâ duhitaram mahân mahîyamânâm
ushâsam indra sam pinak aposhâ anasah sarat sampishtâd aha bibhyushî
ni yat sîm çiçnathad vrishâ; _Rigv._ iv. 30, 8-11.
[103] The two arms of Indras are said to vanquish the cow (or the
cows); Gogitâ bahû; _Rigv._ i. 102, 6.
[104] Vy uchâ duhitar divo mâ ciram tanuthâ apah net tvâ stenam yathâ
ripum tapâti sûro arcishâ; _Rigv._ v. 79, 9.--Cfr. the chapter which
treats of the Spider.
[105] Bhadro bhadrayâ sacamâna âgât svasâram gâro abhy eti paçcat;
_Rigv._ x. 3, 3.
[106] Cfr. _Rigv._ x. 17, and Max Müller's "Lectures on the Science of
Language," second series, 481-486.
[107] Kanyeva tanvâ çâçadânân (arepasâ tanvâ çâçadânâ; _Rigv._ i. 124,
6), eshi devi devam iyakshamânam samsmayamânâ yuvatih purastâd âvir
vakshânsi krinushe vibhâtî; _Rigv._ i. 123, 10.
[108] _Rigv._ i. 30, 20-22.
[109] Vy û vragasya tamaso dvârochantîr avran chucayah pâvakâh;
_Rigv._ iv. 51, 2.--Apa dvesho bâdhamânâ tamânsy ushâ divo duhitâ
gyotishâgât; _Rigv._ v. 80, 5.--Spârhâ vasûni tamasâpagûlhâ âvish,
krinvanty ushaso vibhâtîh; _Rigv._ i. 123, 6.--Sasato bodhayantî;
_Rigv._ i. 124, 4.--Viçvam givam carase bodhayantî; _Rigv._ i. 92,
9.--Martyatrâ; _Rigv._ i. 123, 3.
[110] Viçvâni devî bhuvanâbhicakshyâ; _Rigv._ i. 92, 6.--Pragânatî;
_Rigv._ i. 124, 3.
[111] Arbhâd îshate na maho vibhâtî; _Rigv._ i. 124, 6.
[112] As to Ghoshâ, cured by the Açvinâu (_Rigv._ i. 117, 7), and
Apalâ, cured by Indras (_Rigv._ viii. 80), see the same subject
discussed more in detail in the chapter which treats of the Hog.
[113] Çukrâ krishnâd aganishta çvitîcî; _Rigv._ i. 123, 9.
[114] Yasyânakshâ duhitâ gâtvâsa kas tâm vidvân abhi manyâte andhâm
kataro menim prati tam mucâte ya îm vahâte ya îm vâ vareyât; _Rigv._
x. 27, 11.--Vritrasya kanînikâ 'si cakshushpâ asi; _Tâittir. Yagurv._
i. 2, 1.
[115] Apânyad ety abhy anyad eti vishurûpe ahanî sam carete; _Rigv._
i. 123, 7.
[116] Ruçadvatsâ ruçatî çvetyâgâd ârâig u krishnâ sadanâny asyâh
samânabandhû amrite anûcî dyâvâ varnam carata âminâne samâno adhvâ
svasror anantas tam anyânyâ carato devaçishte na methete na tasthatuh
sumeke naktoshâsa samanasâ virûpe; _Rigv._ i. 113, 2, 3.
[117] Naktoshâsâ varnam âmemyâne dhâpayete çiçum ekam samîcî; _Rigv._
i. 96, 5.
[118] Nâgâmim na pari vrinakti gâmim; _Rigv._ i. 124, 6.
[119] Vyûrnvatî divo antân abodhy apa svasâram sanutar yuyoti praminatî
manushyâ yugâni yoshâ garasya cakshasâ vi bhâti; _Rigv._ i. 92, 11.
[120] Svasâ svasre gyâyasyâi yonim ârâik; _Rigv._ i. 124, 8.
[121] Nârîr apasah; _Rigv._ i. 92, 3.
[122] Çucayah pâvakâh; _Rigv._ iv. 51, 2.
[123] Yoshâ gârasya cakshasâ vibhâti; _Rigv._ quoted above, i. 92, 11.
[124] Yatamânâ raçmibhih sûryasya; _Rigv._ i. 123, 12.--Vyuchantî
raçmibhih sûryasya; _Rigv._ i. 124, 8.
[125] Ritasya yoshâ na minâti dhâma; _Rigv._ i. 123, 9.
[126] Susamkâçâ mâtrimrishteva yoshâvis tanvam krinushe driçe kam;
_Rigv._ i. 123, 11.
[127] Eshâ çubhrâ na tanvo vidânordhveva snâtî driçaye no asthât;
_Rigv._ v. 80, 5.
[128] Adhi peçânsi vapate nritûr ivâpornute vaksha usreva bargaham;
_Rigv._ i. 92, 4.
[129] Bhadrâ vastrâ tanvate; _Rigv._ i. 134, 4.
[130] Smayate vibhâtî supratîkâ; _Rigv._ i. 92, 6.
[131] Prâkramisham ushasâm agriyeva; _Rigv._ x. 95, 2.