brother, who makes four cups out of one. How then does he appear sometimes stupid? The language itself supplies the explanation. In Sanskrit, bâlas 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 Âditis, that is, Âdityas, 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, Vishṇus 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 Trâitanas, 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 horsemen of the twilight, the Açvinâu, come to deliver the invoker (rebhas) covered and enveloped by the waters.[65] In another hymn, the deliverer appears to be Bṛihaspatis, the lord of prayer, who having heard how Tritas, thrust down into the well, was invoking the gods, 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 gods 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 Ṛibhavas, and both the former and the latter into an equally close connection with the three moments of Indras. We have already said that the Ṛibhavas created the cow; in the same way Uçanâ Kâvyâs, 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, usrâ or ushâ 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 assumes in the Ṛigvedas, besides the ordinary one of Ushâ, is Sîtâ, whom Indras also causes to descend from heaven, like the aurora, and who must be milked by the sun-god Pûshan,[73] the nourisher, the fœcundator, compared in one hymn to a pugnacious buffalo.[74] This Indras, protector and friend of Sîtâ, prepares therefore Vishṇus, the protector, in the form of Râmas, of his wife Sîtâ. And even the Ṛibhavas are the protectors of the cow, as well as the producers.