Ushas the Dawn

What strikes us most in all this is the exulting and insulting tone in which the poets celebrate the defeat of the goddess who is, except on this one occasion, their greatest favourite, their heart’s desire, —one might almost say their pet. Some twenty hymns are addressed wholly to her, and she has a place in numerous others ; and everywhere the poets’ fancy exhausts itself in brilliant and dainty imagery, in a variety of loving and admiring epithets. Again and again she is likened to a beautiful woman or maiden, who reveals herself in all her loveliness ; and it must be confessed that these descriptions, as a rule, recall Oriental harem life (or the Zenana of Indian princes), too realistically to be relished by the general reader in their original crudity. So that such passages, scattered through most of the Rig books, may best be summed up in the very comprehensive lines of Mr. J. Muir.  “ Like a beautiful young woman dressed by her mother, a richly decked dancing girl, a gaily attired wife appearing before her husband, or a female rising resplendent out of the bath,—smiling and  confiding in the irresistible power of her attractions, she unveils her bosom to the gaze of the beholder.” A few characteristic verses culled from various hymns will be more interesting and instructive than descriptions detached from the texts:

“The shining Ushas has been perceived; she has opened the doors [of the sky] ; setting in motion all living things, she has revealed to us treasures—[the golden treasures of light that were hidden by darkness]—Ushas has awakened all creatures  . . . She hastens on, arousing footed creatures, and makes the birds fly aloft —The birds fly up from their nests and men seeking food leave their homes —[Arousing] the prostrate sleeper to move, [impelling] one to enjoyment, another to the pursuit of wealth, [enabling] those who see but a little way to see far ; . . . [arousing] one to wield the royal power, another to follow after fame, another to the pursuit of wealth, another to perform services, Ushas awakes all creatures to go their different paths in life —Inasmuch as thou hast made Agni to be kindled— [for morning worship]—. . . and hast awakened the men who are to sacrifice, thou hast done good service to the gods —She has yoked [her horses] from the remote rising place of Surya . . . Everything that moves bows down before her glance ; the active goddess creates light ; by her appearance the magnificent Daughter of the Sky drives away our haters. Ushas has repelled our enemies. ... In thee when thou dawnest is the life and breath of all creatures. . . . ”

The dispeller of enemies—not only of the powers of darkness, but also of thieves and other malefactors who are sheltered by darkness, of bad dreams, phantoms, spells, and all the evil brood of darkness—is quite naturally likened to a warrior brandishing weapons. But rarely. The poets dwell almost entirely on the lovely and even the pathetic aspects of their favorite. And indeed there is no lack of pathos and sadness in the conception of a beauteous and gracious being who, herself immortal and ever youthful, though old as Time, serenely and inevitably, in obedience to the highest Law, (she is “the preserver of Rita,” “born in Rita,”) both prolongs and shortens life, each new day being both her gift to men and the tribute she levies on their sum of days. The pathos is deepened if the bringer of food and joy, the dispenser of life and death, is herself a mortal, a creature of a day — nay, of an hour,—one of many as brilliant and as ephemeral as herself, as she needs must be if eachday is thought as having a dawn to itself. In the  hymns to Ushas we find her addressed and referred to almost in one breath both as the one ever returning or born again, and as the fleeting unit of an endless series “ ... As thou wast invoked by the poets of old, . . . reward our praise also, O Ushas, with gifts and with brilliant light !

“ Maintaining the ordinances of the gods, but wasting away the  lives of men, Ushas has shone forth, the last of the numerous Dawns that are past, and the first of those that are coming. “ Shine on us with thy best rays, O divine Ushas ; give us a long life !  “ Ushas has dawned before ; let her now dawn again. “ Born again and again, though ancient, shining with an ever uniform hue, she wastes away the life of mortals as a clever gambler the stakes. “ Ushas follows the track of the Dawns that are past and is the first of the unnumbered Dawns that are to come. . . . How great is the interval that lies between the Dawns that have arisen and those which are yet to arise? Ushas yearns longingly after the for mer Dawns and gladly goes on shining with the others [that are to come]. Those mortals are gone who saw the earliest Ushas dawn ; we shall gaze upon her now ; and the men are coming who are to behold her on future moms.— . . . Perpetually in former daysdid the divine Ushas dawn ; and now to-day the radiant goddess beams upon this world : undecaying, immortal. . . . ”

The hymn from which the last extract is taken  is the longest and most sustainedly beautiful of those addressed to the “ desire of all men,” —that which closes with the magnificent finale, the grandest lyrical effusion in the whole Rig-Veda :

“ Rise ! Our life, our breath has come back ! The darkness is gone, the light approaches ! Ushas has opened a path for Surya to travel ; we have reached the point where our days are lengthened. The priest, the poet, celebrating the brightening Ushas, arises with the web of his hymn ; shine, therefore, magnificent Ushas, on him who praises thee. . . . Mother of the gods ! manifestation of Aditi ! banner of the sacrifice, mighty Ushas, shine forth ! Arise ! lenda gracious ear to our prayer, giver of all boons !”

We seem to see the uplifted hands, the worshipping upturned eyes, amid the glories of the awakening Eden-like nature—and we long for a burst of Wagner’s song and harmony. It seems as though nothing short of Brynhild’s waking invocation, “ Hail, O Sun,” could worthily render the grandeur, simplicity and whole-hearted adoration in this archaic ode.

THE TWO SISTERS

There are some verses in this same hymn which very beautifully and completely describe the Dawn’s relations to her sister, who of course is no other than Night:

“The ruddy Bright-one with her bright Calf [the Sun ]  has arrived ; to her the Dark-one has relinquished her abodes ; kindred to one another, immortal, alternating Night and Morning go on changing color.—The same is the never-ending path of the two sisters, which they travel by the gods’ command. They strive not, they rest not, the majestic Night and Dawn, of one mind, though unlike.”

Once or twice the Bright-one is said to be born of the Dark-one (the Dawn to be daughter of Night), but in the great majority of texts they are sisters—the two beauteous Daughters of the Sky, equally beneficent, equally welcome, and equally—but alternately —bringing refreshment and vigor to all that lives ; “ alike to-day, alike to-morrow, fulfilling the fixed ordinance of Varuna,” never transgressing it, never omitting to be at the proper time at the appointed place. Evidently Night is not here conceived as the wicked foe of men, the devouring Beast, the river or sea of darkness, but as the kind friend, the bringer of rest and coolness, the gentle fosterer and restorer. Both sisters are great weavers. They are perpetually weaving mantles and veils—golden, shining, or black, each after her manner; and one undoes the weaving of the other. Ushas shows herself beaming at the borders of the sky, having thrown off the dark. covering, as she drives on her beautiful chariot drawn by the self-yoked ruddy steeds ; Surya rolls it up like a hide unweaves, ravels it up, and hides it away . Yet even this work the sisters perform amicably: “Jointly they weave the out-spread curtain ” . So close indeed is their relationship, though each goes when the other comes—Ushas “ chases far away her sister ”—and so harmoniously do they work together, that the poet at last wonderingly asks : “ Which of them is the older and which the younger ? Who knows, O ye sages ? They carry (between them) all that exists, revolving as on one wheel ”

Ushas and Surya

Ushas’ relations to the Sun are as natural, but more varied. She “ shines with the light of her lover,” Surya, who “ follows her as a lover follows a maiden.” But she flies before him and he never can join her; it were disastrous for her if he did, for the delicate Dawn never could stand the full blaze of her lover’s splendor ; indeed one poet urges her—not very politely—to hasten and make no delay, that Surya may not scorch her like a thief or an enemy. But sometimes she is Surya’s wife though he is her brother too, both being children of Dyaus—and sometimes his mother. As such she appears in that peculiar passage where she arrives with her “bright Calf.” For there Ushas, the fair, the resplendent, appears in the form of a Cow.

Ushas, the Mother of Cows

Vedic heavenly zoology is a curious thing; and confusing, unless one has the patience to study out its main features and underlying principle, after which it becomes, on the whole, tolerably intelligible. The phenomena are many ; the animals are few ; so they have to do duty for different things. They are, if we may so word it, homonyms in their way. Thus the Horse, the well-attested emblem of the Sun, once in a while stands for the Sky—as when the Pitris are said to have adorned the black horse  with pearls (the moonless starry sky). Serpents are not always drought-clouds ; there are the serpents of darkness. Nor are cows always rain-clouds; there are also the ruddy, bright cows—the Kine of Light, and the black cows—the Kine of Darkness. Looked at in one way, Night is the dark stable in which the bright cows are shut up ; Ushas opens the stable and they bound forth joyously and “ scatter around her like a herd.” These are of course the rays of the dawn which shoot forth in all directions—and lo Ushas appears in the role of shepherdess. Vedic imagery could not stop there. From a “ leader of cows,” she became “ the mother of cows,” and consequently a cow herself ; a lovely bright one of course ; hence her child, the Sun—as calf ! But even so her bond with her sister Night is not severed, and both are invoked together as “ the two cows which give milk of different colors from similar udders.” This fully explains the otherwise obscure passage where Indra is said to have put dark milk in the black cows and light milk in the ruddy ones.We must not forget one last  attribute of Ushas, not the least of her charms in the eyes of her by no means disinterested votaries—her great wealth. It is not only that, at her coming, she reveals the treasures of golden light,—the herds of ruddy cows,—which had been hidden by her sister Night. She is the dispenser, in an indirect way, of far more substantial treasures. By going from house to house, arousing all sleepers, whether poor or rich,  to their day’s work, she fosters honest endeavor and helps it to its earnings. But even this is too slow and commonplace a way to wealth to content those priests who are forever crying out to the gods, in the name of the worshippers, for riches on a large scale herds of cattle, horses, booty from enemies, wives (really female slaves), and sons, strong, stalwart, and numerous,—and, in their own, for “great gifts ” and“ liberality,” i. c. } the highest possible pay for their priestly services from kings and wealthy patrons generally. These great boons, these windfalls, the gods reserve for the pious sacrificer and “ somapresser,” the zealous performer of appointed rites and singer of hymns. But, to be efficacious, the singing, the rites, the sacrifice, must take place at the appointed times, of which the most sacred and important is the hour of sunrise. Ushas, therefore, who “ causes Agni to be kindled ” on the morning altar, who gives the signal for the “joyful voices” to be raised, and “ brings the gods to the sacrifice ” jointly with their messenger Agni, puts men in the way of obtaining all they so much covet, and thus becomes a dispenser of wealth. Not improperly, therefore, is she addressed in such strains as this, which may stand here for numberless similar passages:

“Dawn on us with prosperity, O Ushas, Daughter of the Sky, with great glory, O luminous and bountiful goddess, with riches ! —Bringing horses and cattle, all-bestowing, they [the Dawns] have often come to shine. Send riches then to me also, Ushas, incline the Kings to dispense gifts. . . . Those princes, O Ushas, who at thy approach incline their thoughts to liberality, Kanva, the chief of his race, 1 here celebrates. “ May the soma-presser obtain such Dawns as rise upon the liberal mortal (Dawns), rich in kine, in sons all stalwart, and in horses.

Always the same thing : the bargain between the worshipper and the deity he invokes. To the “liberal mortal,” who grudges neither soma, nor fire, nor cakes and hymns, nor fees to the priests, a liberal return is due from the gods. It is to be noticed that, however varied the Vedic Aryas’ mythical  vocabulary may be, their begging is remarkably monotonous. They ask precisely the same things of every deity—quantities of them—and in almost precisely the same words.

THE ASHVINS

Numerous are the Children of the Sky. We will close the brilliant galaxy with the renowned couple of twins, the Ashvins, or Horsemen, the brothers of the Sun and the Dawn. They are almost as great favorites as the latter. Many hymns are addressed to them, and they are incidentally mentioned or invoked in a great many more. No other deities, scarcely Indra himself, have become the heroes of such a number of what we may call “ storymyths.” Indeed, so many and different things are told, asked, and expected of them, that when the Rig-Veda had lost its living actuality, and commentators went to work on it, they were fairly puzzled to determine their original nature, i. e., the natural powers or phenomena which they represent. For they are not only horsemen (or more probably “ descendants of the horse,” since they themselves never ride, but drive their own chariots like the other gods)—they are also the physicians of gods and men, workers of miracles, rescuers from storms, best men at weddings, protectors of love and conjugal life. This is certainly confusing ; and no less so are the answers given by different commentators to the query : “ Who—or rather what—are the Ashvins ? ” Yet some indications we owe them which helped our scholars in their researches ; but a careful and minute study of the Rig texts has, as usual, proved the surest guide, and the question may now be considered as settled.

The Ashvins the Twilight Twin

The Ashvins’ connection with the Horse (ashva gives assurance of their heavenly luminous nature, and this is confirmed by the many epithets conferred on them. Like their sister Ushas, they are beautiful, gracious, bright, swift, immortal, young, though ancient. This latter feature alone would point to a regularly recurring phenomenon of the morning. Then, they are the earliest risers and arrive the first at the morning sacrifice, ahead of the Dawn, who is said to come immediately after them ; the worshipper, to greet them with his song has to get up before the dawn ; and they are asked to come to the house on their chariot “ to which the twilightis yoked,” for the sacrifice held “ at the first lighting up of the dawn.” Indeed they come earlier still their chariot appears “ at the end of the night,” and they are invoked also “in the last watch of night,” as well as “ at break of day ”—two moments, to be sure, which come very close together ; with the difference, however, that at the former it is stilldark and at the latter it is not quite light. They are “ dispellers of darkness ” and “ killers of Rakshasas” like all luminous beings; they “open the doors of the fast-closed stable rich in cows ” (the Dawns, or the rays of the Dawn). These things are explicitly said and repeated in numbers of texts,' and leave no doubt as to the original place of the Ashvins in the order of natural phenomena: they represent the twilight hour which precedes the dawn, luminous, but not yet brilliant—a delicate touch quaintly expressed by giving them a team of gray asses—animals that are not quite horses and subdued in color. Not always though. Nothing is immutable in the Rig- Veda. So the chariot of the Ashvins is quite as often drawn by horses. One poet is struck by some fancy, some nice characteristic detail, and gives it. Another takes it up, or sets it aside, at his pleasure—or, for that matter, he does so himself. It is all a question of moods, not deliberate invention.

The most decisive witness in favor of this identification of the Ashvins with the morning twilight, we find in this thoroughly Vedic riddle “ When the dark cow [Night] sits among the ruddy cows [the rays of the Dawn], I invoke you, Ashvins, Sons of the Sky,” i. e., “ when night has not quite gone and morning is just coming.” Possibly it was this text which clinched the question for Yaska, one of the great native commentators, who in his catalogue raisonnd of Vedic deities (the Niruktci), after mentioning the opinions of other students, gives as his own that “ Their time is after the (latter) half of the night when the (space’s) becoming light is resisted (by darkness) ; for the middlemost Ashvin, (the one between darkness and light) shares in darkness, whilst (the other) who is of a solar nature — dditya—shares in light. This also explains why there should be two Ashvins, twins. For twilight, the well-named, is of a complicated and essentially dual nature : beginning in darkness, ending in light. Hence, too, there is a difference between the brothers. Yaska, in the passage partly quoted above, says that “ one [of course the elder] pervades everything with moisture, the other with light.” Again, one is a hero and conqueror (he who stands the brunt of the first fight with darkness), and the other is the wealthy, fortunate Son of the Sky (whose time is when the fight is won, of which good news he is the bearer, while the treasures of returning light begin to be revealed). Still the two moments are so close together that the twins are regarded as inseparable, and compared to all sorts of things which go in pairs—the two eyes, the two ears, the two breasts, a bird and his mate, two w'heels, etc., etc. In the course of time, a certain spirit of symmetry asserts itself, and the ritual decrees that the Ashvins shall be invoked twice, morning and evening, making them to personate both the twilight before sunrise and that after sunset—though in express contradiction to the following text :

“ Invoke the Ashvins in the morning; the evening is not the time for gods—it is displeasing to them ” (naturally, since  the gods are devas, “bright ”). It will be seen how easily this could lead to identify the Twins, one with the morning twilight, the other with the evening twilight,—and even with Day and Night,—which has been done repeatedly, contrary to the very essence of the myth, which makes them inseparable, not alternate. Ritualism at last prevails entirely, and we find—still in the Rig-Veda—a third invocation of the Ashvins at noon, evidently in accord with the three daily offerings. This is the beginning of confusion, and affords us at the same time a glimpse of the stratification of periods in the Rig- Veda—like that in the Avesta—resulting in the obliteration, or at least blurring, of the original conceptions.

Once we have succeeded in determining the elementary nature of the joy-bringing Twins, we also have the key to their various acts and deeds, which.are always gracious and beneficent, wherein they differ widely from most other gods. They are invariably mild, helpful, merciful. They are the great Physicians, who heal the sick, make the lame to walk, the blind to see. But their patients are always the same: the Old Sun, who reaches the goal of his long day’s journey weary and sick unto death—when the foe he has fought  and vanquished, grim Darkness, at last overcomes and blinds him—and who is made young again and vigorous, and seeing, by the returning light which the Ashvins—the morning twilight—conquer and bring ; or else it is the Old Dawn—the evening gloaming—who runs the same dangers, undergoes the same infirmities and decay, and is led forth, rejuvenated and radiant, by her ever youthful brothers. They are best men at weddings, protectors of love and marriage, because they bring the Dawn-bride before the face of her Sun lover, or reunite the separated lovers. On one occasion, indeed, Ushas is said to have mounted on the Ashvins’ car-—(was it not on the memorable occasion when her own was shattered by the ungallant Indra?)—and to have chosen them for her husbands.—They are rescuers from stormy waters, because night is a dark and stormy waste of waters, full of dangers and monsters, into which the worn out Sun fatally sinks, and in which he might perish, did not the ever helpful heralds of Light take him into their swiftly flying ship and carry him safely across to the other—the bright—shore, from which he rises aloft, in fully restored vigor and splendor. — And will not those who do all these kindly offices, who work these miracles for gods, do the same for suppliant men? We know that every myth ends by coming down to earth and being humanized. It will strike every one how many and varied stories could and must have been spun out of this peculiarly attractive and prolific myth of the Ashvins.

Pushan

We cannot close the gallery of the Vedic Beings of Light without devoting a few lines to one who, though holding a rather modest rank, shares in their honors, and is always affectionately and reverently remembered. We mean PUSHAN, pre-eminently a friend of men, and whose career is one of almost homely usefulness. The great French Vedic scholar, A. Bergaigne, sums it up in one brief page, so lucid and comprehensive, that we cannot do better than reproduce it:

“ Pushan is, first of all, a pastoral and agricultural deity. He is requested to direct the furrow ; his hand is armed with the ox-goad ; he is principally the guardian of cattle, who prevents them from straying, and finds them again when they get lost. He is, therefore, prayed to follow the cows, to look after them, to keep them from harm, to bring them home safe and sound. His care extends to all sorts of property, which he guards or finds again when lost. He is also the finder of hidden treasure,—cows first on the list, always. Lastly, Pushan guides men, not only in their search for lost or hidden things, but on all their ways generally. In a word, he is the god of wayfarers as well as of husbandmen and herdsmen. He is called ‘ Lord of the Path,’ he is prayed to ‘ lay out the roads,’ to remove from them foes and hindrances, to guide his worshippers by the safest roads, as ‘knowing all the abodes.’ ...”

A very human field of action—almost a picture of rural life. But all the foregoing pages have been written to little purpose, if it does not strike the reader at once that it is a reflection of the usual heavenly pastoral,—itself, of course, originally copied from the earthly model. We are, by this time, sufficiently familiar with the aerial pastures and roads, along which the heavenly cattle—whether Cloud- Kine or Kine of Light—roam and stray, get stolen or lost, and are found again. So do we know who they are that guard, and follow, and find them, and bring them back. But not these alone are heaven’s “hidden treasure.” Agni lies hidden and is found, and so is Soma, whom Pushan is expressly said to have brought back “ like a strayed ox ” ; and immediately : “Pushan, abounding in rays, found the king, who lay hidden, and who now shines forth on the sacrificial grass.” This at once establishes Pushan’s claim to a place in the highest heavens, at the very source of light itself. It is there that he is the lover of his sister Surya, the Sun-maiden, and sails his golden ships across the aerial ocean. So much for this gentle deity's naturalistic aspects. His loftier symbolical character will become apparent in connection with a different—and later developed— order of ideas.