1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Usas

USAS (from the root vas, to shine, and cognate to Latin Aurora and Greek Ἠώς,) in Hindu mythology, the goddess of dawn. She is celebrated in some twenty hymns of the Rig Veda, and is the most graceful creation of Vedic poetry. She is borne on a shining car drawn by ruddy cows or bulls. She is the daughter of the sky and the sun is her lover. She is described as “ rising resplendent as from a bath, showing her charms she comes with light . . . ever shortening the ages of men she shines forth . . . she reveals the paths of men and bestows new life . . . she opens the doors of darkness as the cows their stalls.” Scarcely the name of the goddess survives to-day, so completely was she associated with the Vedism long dead and gone.

See A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (Strassburg, 1897).