Hindu mythology is famous for what I should like to hear called arrested
personification, or arrested anthropomorphism. More than elsewhere
mythic figures seem here to cling to the dear memories of their birth
and youth. This is due in part to the unequaled impressiveness of nature
in India; in part to the dogged schematism of the Hindu mind, which
dislikes to let go of any part of a thing from the beginning to end. On
the one hand, their constant, almost too rhythmic resort to nature in
their poetry, and on the other, their Ved[=a]nta philosophy, or for
that matter their _Ars amatoria_ (_K[=a]maç[=a]stra_), the latter worked
out with painstaking and undignified detail, illustrate the two points.
Hence we find here a situation which is familiar enough in the Veda, but
scarcely and rarely exhibited in other mythological fields. Dogs, the
two dogs of Yama are, but yet, too, sun and moon. It is quite surprising
how well the attributes of things so different keep on fitting them both
well enough. The color and brightness of the sun jumps with the fixed
epithet, "spotted," of the sun-dog Çabala; the moon-dog is black
(Çy[=a]ma or Çy[=a]va). Sun and moon, as they move across the sky, are
the natural messengers of Yama, seated on high in the abode of the
blessed, but Yama is after all death, and death hounds us all. Epithets
like "man-beholding," or "guarding the way," suit neutrally both
conceptions. Above all, the earliest statements about Yama's dogs are
relieved of their inconsistencies. On the one hand the exhortation to
the dead to run past the two dogs in order to get to heaven, suits the
idea of the heavenly dogs who are coursing across the sky. On the other
hand, by an easy, though quite contrary, change of mental position, the
same two heavenly dogs are the guides who guard the way and look upon
men favorably; hence they are ordered by Yama to take charge of the dead
and to furnish them such health and prosperity as the shades happen to
have use for. Again, by an equally simple shift of position, sun and
moon move among men as the messengers of death; by night and by day men
perish, while these heavenly bodies alternate in their presence among
men.[14] Hence a text of the Veda can say in a similar mood: "May Day
and Night procure for us long life" (House-book of [=A]çval[=a]yana, ii.
4. 14). Conversely it is a commonplace of the Veda to say that day and
night destroy the lives of men. One text says that, "day and night are
the encircling arms of death" (Br[=a]hmana of the _K[=a]ush[=i]takin_,
ii. 9). Another, more explicitly, "the year is death"; by means of day
and night does it destroy the life of mortals (_Çatapatha-Br[=a]hmana_,
x. 4. 3. 1). He who wishes to be released from the grim grip of day and
night sacrifices (symbolically) white and black rice, and pronounces the
words: "Hail to Day; hail to Night; hail to Release" (Br[=a]hmana of the
_T[=a]ittiriya_, iii. 1. 6. 2). Who does not remember in this connection
the parable widely current in the Orient, in which two rats, one white,
the other black, gnaw alternately, but without let-up, the plant or tree
of life?[15]