Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/166

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152
MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION.

bird, a raven or a crow. According to the Aitareya Brahmana (ii. 59), the gods bought some from the Gandharvas in exchange for one of their own number, who was metamorphosed into a woman, "a big naked woman" of easy virtue. In the Satapatha Brahmana,[1] the gods, while still they lived on earth, desired to obtain soma, which was then in the sky. A Gandharva robbed the divine being who had flown up and seized the soma, and, as in the Aitareya Brahmana, the gods won the plant back by the aid of Vach, a woman-envoy to the amorous Gandharvas. The Black Yajur Veda has some ridiculous legends about Soma (personified) and his thirty-three wives, their jealousies, and so forth. Soma, in the Rig-Veda, is not only the beverage that inspires Indra, but is also an anthropomorphic god who created and lighted up the sun,[2] and who drives about in a chariot. He is sometimes addressed as a kind of Atlas, who keeps heaven and earth asunder.[3] He is prayed to forgive the violations of his law.[4] Soma, in short, as a personified power, wants little of the attributes of a supreme deity.[5]

Another, and to modern ideas much more poetical personified power, often mentioned in the Vedas, is Ushas, or the dawn. As among the Australians, the dawn is a woman, but a very different being from the immodest girl dressed in red kangaroo-skins of the Murri myth. She is an active maiden, who[6] "advances,

  1. Muir, v. 263.
  2. Rig-Veda, vi. 44, 23.
  3. Rig-Veda, vi. 44, 24.
  4. Rig-Veda, viii. 48, 9.
  5. Bergaigne, i. 216. To me it seems that the Rishis when hymning Soma simply gave him all the predicates of God that came into their heads. Cf. Bergaigne, i. 223.
  6. Rig-Veda, i. 48.