(and the luminous sky) hidden in the dark, who strives to dissipate the shadows, the sun hidden in the cloud that thunders and lightens, to dissolve it in rain—is represented as a powerful bull, as the bull of bulls, invincible son of the cow, that bellows like the Marutas.[10]

But in order to become a bull, in order to grow, to develop the strength necessary to kill the serpent, Indras must drink; and he drinks the water of strength, the somas.[11] "Drink and grow,"[12] one of the poets says to him, while offering the symbolical libation of the cup of sacrifice, which is a type of the cup of heaven, now the heavenly vault, now the cloud, now the sun, and now the moon. From the sweet food of the celestial cow, Indras acquires a swiftness which resembles that of the horse;[13] and he eats and drinks at one time enough to enable him to attain maturity at once. The gods give him three hundred oxen to eat, and three lakes of ambrosial liquor[14] to drink, in order that he may be able to kill the monster serpent. The hunger and thirst of the heroes is always proportioned to the miracle they are called upon to perform; and for this reason the hymns of the Ṛigvedas and of the Atharvavedas often represent the cloud as an immense great-bellied barrel (Kabandhas), which is carried by the divine bull.[15]

But when and how does the hero-bull display his extraordinary strength? The terrible bull bellows, and shows his strength, as he sharpens his horns:[16] the splendid bull, with sharpened horns, who is able of himself to overthrow all peoples.[17] But what are the horns of the bull Indras, the god of thunder? Evidently the thunderbolts; Indras is, in fact, said to sharpen the thunderbolts as a bull sharpens his horns;[18] the thunderbolt of Indras is said to be thousand-pointed;[19] the bull Indras is called the bull with the thousand horns, who rises from the sea[20] (or from the cloudy ocean as a thunder-dealing sun, from the gloomy ocean as a radiant sun—the thunderbolt being supposed to be rays from the solar disc). Sometimes the thunderbolt of Indras is itself called a bull,[21] and is sharpened by its beloved refulgent cows,[22] being used, now to withdraw the cows from the darkness, now to deliver them from the monster of darkness that envelops them,[23] and now to destroy the monster of clouds and darkness itself. Besides the name of Indras, this exceedingly powerful horned bull, who sharpens his horns to plunge them into the monster, assumes also, as the fire which sends forth lightning, as that which sends forth rays of light from the clouds and the darkness, the name of Agnis; and, as such, has two heads, four horns, three feet, seven hands, teeth of fire, and wings; he is borne on the wind, and blows.[24]

Thus far, then, we have heavenly cows which nurture heavenly bulls, and heavenly bulls and cows which use their horns for a battle that is fought in heaven.

Let us now suppose ourselves on the field of battle, and let us visit both the hostile camps. In one we find the sun (and sometimes the moon), the bull of bulls Indras, with the winds, Marutas, the radiant and bellowing bulls; in the other, a multiform monster, in the shape of wolves, serpents, wild boars, owls, mice, and such like. The bull Indras has cows with him, who help him; the monster has also cows, either such as he has carried off from Indras, and which he imprisons and secretes in gloomy caverns, towers, or fortresses, or those which he caresses as his own wives. In the one case, the cows consider the bull Indras as their friend and liberating hero; in the other, those with the monster are themselves monsters and enemies of Indras, who fights against them. The clouds, in a word, are regarded at one time as the friends of the rain-giving sun, who delivers them from the monster that keeps back the rain, and at another as attacked by the sun, as they who wickedly envelop him, and endeavour to destroy him. Let us now go on to search, in the Ṛigvedas, the proofs of this double battle.

To begin with the first phase of the conflict, where in the sky does Indras fight the most celebrated of all his battles?

The clouds generally assume the aspect of mountains; the words adris and parvatas, in the Vedic language, expressing the several ideas of stone, mountain, and cloud.[25] The cloud being compared to a stone, a rock, or a mountain, it was natural,—1st, To imagine in the rock or mountain dens or caverns, which, as they imprisoned cows, might be likened to stables;[26] 2d, To pass from the idea of a rock to that of citadel, fortress, fortified city, tower; 3d, To pass