passage of the Tāittirīya-Veda (v. 7. 19); here sundry parts of the sacrificial horse are assigned to four cosmic phenomena in the following order: 1. Sun and moon. 2. Çyāma and Çabala (the two dogs of Yama). 3. Dawn. 4. Evening twilight. So that the dogs of Yama are sandwiched in between sun and moon on the one side, dawn and evening twilight on the other. Obviously they are here, either as a special designation of day and night, or their physical equivalents, sun and moon. And now the Çatapatha-Brāhmana says explicitly: "The moon verily is the divine dog; he looks down upon the cattle of the sacrificer." And again a passage in the Kashmir version of the Atharva-Veda says: "The four-eyed dog (the moon) surveys by night the sphere of the night."

SUN AND MOON AS STATIONS ON THE WAY TO SALVATION.

Even the theosophic Upanishads are compelled to make their way through this tolerably crude mythology when they come to deal with the passage of the soul to release from existence and absorption in the universal Brahma. The human mind does not easily escape some kind of eschatological topography. The Brahma itself may be devoid of all properties, universal, pervasive, situated below as well as above, the one true thing everywhere; still even the Upanishads finally fix upon a world of Brahma, and that is above, not below, nor elsewhere; hence the soul must pass the great cosmic potencies that seem to lie on the road from the sublunary regions to Brahma. The Kāushītaki Upanishad (1. 2. 3) arranges that all who leave this world first go to the moon, the moon being the door of the world of light. The moon asks certain theosophic questions; he alone who can answer them is considered sufficiently emancipated to advance to the world of Brahma. He who cannot—alas!—is born again as worm or as fly; as fish or as fowl; as lion or as boar; as bull or tiger or man; or as something else—any old thing, as we should say—in this place or in that place, according to the quality of his works and the degree of his knowledge; that is, in accordance with the doctrine of Karma. Similarly the Māitri Upanishad (vi. 38) sketches salvation as follows: When a mortal no longer approves of wrath, and ponders the true wish, he penetrates the veil that encloses the Brahma, breaks through the concentric circles of sun, moon, fire, etc., that occupy the ether. Only then does he behold the supreme thing that is founded upon its own greatness only. And now the Chāndogya Upanishad (viii. 13) has the same idea, mentioning both moon and sun by their ancient names and in their capacity as dogs of Yama. The soul of the aspirant for fusion with Brahma resorts purgatorio-fashion alternately to Çyāma (the moon-dog) and Çabala (the sun-dog): "From Çyāma (the moon) do I resort to Çabala (the sun); from Çabala to Çyāma. Shaking off sin, as a steed shakes off (the loose hair of) its mane, as the moon frees itself from the maw of Rāhu, the demon of eclipse, casting aside my body, my real self delivered, do I enter into the uncreated world of Brahma."[13]

ANALYSIS OF THE MYTH.

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 Vedānta philosophy, or for that matter their Ars amatoria (Kāmaçāstra), 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 (Çyāma or Çyāva). 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 Āçvalāyana, 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" (Brāhmana of the Kāushītakin, ii. 9). Another, more explicitly, "the year is death; by means of day and night does it destroy the life of mortals (Çatapatha-Brāhmana, 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" (Brāhmana of the Tāittiriya, 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]

THE CERBERI IN THE NORSE MYTH.

Norse mythology also contains certain animal pairs which seem to reflect the two dualities, sun and moon, and day and night. There is here no certainty as to detail; the Norse myth is advanced and congealed, if not spurious, as Professor Bugge and his school would have us believe. At the feet of Odin lie his two wolves, Geri and Freki, "Greedy" and "Voracious." They hurl themselves across the lands when peace is broken. Who shall say that they are to be entirely dissociated from Yama's two dogs of death? The virgin Menglödh sleeps in her wonderful castle on the mountain called Hyfja, guarded by the two dogs Geri and Gifr, "Greedy" and "Violent," who take turns in watching; only alternately may they sleep as they