Zoological Mythology Volume I Part 1

Zoological Mythology.

Volume I.

by Angelo de Gubernatis.

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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, 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, P?icnayas.--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 G.o.ds 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 a.n.a.logous 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 hors.e.m.e.n, 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 ?ibhavas.--The ?ibhavas, bulls and wise birds.--The three ?ibhavas reproduce the triple Indras and the triple Vish?us; 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 ?ibhavas, 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 Sita.--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 Urvaci.--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 _f?cundator_, 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 ill.u.s.trious, 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 _f?cundator_ 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 _a 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 a.s.sisted 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 _?igvedas_, 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 Kacmira, 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 a.s.sertion. 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 gra.s.s to grow, and therefore the animals which pasture upon it, a.s.sumes in the Vedic literature the name of Aditis, or the infinite, the inexhaustible, the fountain of ambrosia (_am?itasya nabhis_). Thus far, however, we have no personification, as yet we have no myth. The _am?itas_ 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 princ.i.p.al and most visible phenomena of the sky should become, in their turn, children of the cow, or themselves cows or bulls, and that the _f?cundator_ of the great mother should also be called a bull.

Hence we read that the wind (_Vayus_ or _Rudras_) gave birth, from the womb of the celestial cow, to the winds that howl in the tempest (_Marutas_ and _Rudras_), 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 (_p?icnis_) 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 (_p?icnayas_) 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 G.o.d or that of a monster is often symbolised. If _p?icnis_, or the variegated cow, therefore, is the mother of the Marutas, the winds, and of the variegated ones (_p?icnayas_), 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 _?igvedas_ 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 (_Vayus_), 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 l.u.s.ty 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 G.o.d of thunder and rain; of the sun, the dispeller of clouds and darkness; of the supreme Vedic G.o.d, 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 G.o.ds 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 _?igvedas_ 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 G.o.d 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, a.s.sumes 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 _?igvedas_, 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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.s from the idea of a rock to that of citadel, fortress, fortified city, tower; 3d, To pa.s.s 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 G.o.d Indras, or the sun of thunder, lightning, and rain, now does battle within a cavern, now carries a fortified town by a.s.sault, 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, V?itras, Cush?as, 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 G.o.ds, 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 cambaras, 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 G.o.ds arrive at last, bring their axes, and with their edges destroy the woods, and burn the monsters who restrain the milk in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 Vedas, is thus replaced by a forest which hides the honey, the ambrosia beloved by the G.o.ds. 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 pa.s.sage from the Vedas 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 princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.ds, 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 a.s.sumes all its poetical splendour. And the most solemn moments of the great national Aryan epic poems, the _Ramaya?am_ and the _Mahabharatam_, 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 _?igvedas_ itself, in a pa.s.sage already quoted,[42] tells us that the clouds--the three times seven spotted cows--cause their milk to drop to a G.o.d (whom, from another similar pa.s.sage,[43] we know to be Indras, the sun) in the eastern sky (_purve vyomani_), that is, towards the morning, and sometimes towards the spring, many of the phenomena of which correspond to those of the aurora. The _P?icnayas_, or spotted ones, are beyond doubt the clouds, as the Marutas, sons of P?icnis, 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 P?icnayas feeding the sun Indras in the eastern heavens and the seven _Angirasas_, 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 pa.s.sing 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 _gaus_ (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 cakras; 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_ (somapatamas), is also the best friend and companion of the ambrosial or pluvial moon, and so the sun and moon (as also Indras and Vish?us) together come to suggest to us the idea of two friends, two brothers (Indus and Indras), two twins, the two Acvinau; often the two twilights, properly speaking, the morning and the evening, the spring and the autumn, twilights, the former, however, being especially a.s.sociated 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 (_Indrasomau_) are more frequently represented as two bulls who together discomfit the monster (_rakshoha?au_), who destroy by fire the monsters that live in darkness.[47] The word _v?isha?au_ properly means the two who pour out, or fertilise. Here it means the two bulls; but as the word _v?ishan_ signifies stallion as well as bull, the two stallions, the v?isha?au Indras and Somas, are, by a natural transition, soon transformed into two horses or hors.e.m.e.n, the two Acvinau. 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 antic.i.p.ate comparisons which we shall have to make further on. Having noticed that, in the _?igvedas_, we find the moon represented either as a bull or a cow (the masculine, _Indus_, _somas_, _candras_, is always a bull; while the feminine, _raka_, 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 G.o.ds, by the three brothers _?ibhavas_, 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 ?ibhavas, the threefold sun Indras, _i.e._, the sun in the three watches of the night, prepares the skin of this cow, one ?ibhus taking off the skin from the dead cow, another ?ibhus preparing it during the night (or winter), and the third ?ibhus, 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 ?ibhavas may, it seems to me, be the more easily identified with the triple Indras, with Indra-Vish?us, 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 ?ibhavas, whom we speak of here as producers of the cow Aurora (the same sterile cow of the sleeping hero cayus, that which the Acvinau, the two hors.e.m.e.n of the twilight, restored to youth by the ?ibhavas, 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 ?ibhavas, then, are three brothers. They prepare themselves to procure the cups which are to serve for the G.o.ds 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 _?igvedas_ 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 ?ibhus, or _?ibhuksha_, is said to serve the G.o.d Indras in the quality of a workman (whence Indras himself sometimes received the name of ?ibhuksha, ?ibhvan, or ?ibhvas), yet the other two brothers, _Va?as_ and _Vibhvan_, are in the service, one of all the G.o.ds, the other of Varu?as, the G.o.d of night.[56] It would seem natural to recognise in ?ibhus, the protege 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, Va?as is first named, then ?ibhuksha, and finally Vibhvan; in another, Va?as first, Vibhvan second, and ?ibhus third;[57] in another, again, ?ibhus is invoked first, then Vibhvan, and lastly Va?as; and as we also find all the ?ibhavas saluted under the common epithet of Va?as, and Va?as himself by the name of Indras, or rather Indras saluted in his triple form of ?ibhus, Vibhvan, and Va?as,[58] it remains uncertain which of these was the proper name of the third brother of the ?ibhavas. But what seems to be sufficiently clear is, that Indras is identified with the ?ibhavas (_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 _?igvedas_, the host of the ?ibhavas 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 gra.s.s 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 _?igvedas_ 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 aditis (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, _balas_ 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 aditis, that is, adityas, 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, Vish?us 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 _Traitanas_, 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 hors.e.m.e.n of the twilight, the Acvinau, come to deliver the invoker (_rebhas_) covered and enveloped by the waters.[65] In another hymn, the deliverer appears to be B?ihaspatis, the lord of prayer, who having heard how Tritas, thrust down into the well, was invoking the G.o.ds, 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 G.o.ds 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 ?ibhavas, and both the former and the latter into an equally close connection with the three moments of Indras. We have already said that the ?ibhavas created the cow; in the same way _Ucana Kavyas_, 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, _usra_ or _usha_ 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 a.s.sumes in the _?igvedas_, besides the ordinary one of _Usha_, is _Sita_, whom Indras also causes to descend from heaven, like the aurora, and who must be milked by the sun-G.o.d _Pushan_,[73] the nourisher, the _f?cundator_, compared in one hymn to a pugnacious buffalo.[74] This Indras, protector and friend of Sita, prepares therefore Vish?us, the protector, in the form of Ramas, of his wife Sita. And even the ?ibhavas are the protectors of the cow, as well as the producers.[75]