from the idea of a mountain, which is immovable, to that of a tree which, though it cannot move from its place, yet rears itself and expands in the air; and from the idea of the tree of the forest to the shadowy and awe-inspiring grove. Hence the bull, or hero, or god Indras, or the sun of thunder, lightning, and rain, now does battle within a cavern, now carries a fortified town by assault, and now draws forth the cow from the forest, or unbinds it from the tree, destroying the rakshas, or monster, that enchained it.

The Vedic poetry celebrates, in particular, the exploit of Indras against the cavern, enclosure, or mountain in which the monster (called by different names and especially by those of Valas, Vṛitras, Cushṇas, of enemy, black one, thief, serpent, wolf, or wild boar) conceals the herds of the celestial heroes, or slaughters them.

The black bull bellows; the thunderbolt bellows, that is, the thunder follows the lightning, as the cow follows its calf;[27] the Marutas bulls ascend the rock—now, by their own efforts, moving and making the sonorous stone, the rock mountain, fall;[28] now, with the iron edge of their rolling chariots violently splitting the mountain;[29] the valiant hero, beloved by the gods, moves the stone;[30] Indras hears the cows: by the aid of the wind-bulls he finds the cows hidden in the cavern; he himself, furnished with an arm of stone, opens the grotto of Valas, who keeps the cows; or, opens the cavern to the cows; he vanquishes, kills, and pursues the thieves in battle; the bulls bellow; the cows move forward to meet them; the bull, Indras, bellows and leaves his seed in the herd; the thunder-dealing male, Indras, and his spouse are glad and rejoice.[31]

In this fabled enterprise, three moments must be noted: 1st, The effort to raise the stone; 2d, The struggle with the monster who carried off the cows; 3d, The liberation of the prisoners. It is an entire epic poem.

The second form of the enterprise of Indras in the cloudy heavens is that which has for its object the destruction of the celestial fortresses, of the ninety, or ninety-nine, or hundred cities of Çambaras, of the cities which were the wives of the demons; and from this undertaking Indras acquired the surname of puramdaras (explained as destroyer of cities); although he had in it a most valuable companion-in-arms, Agnis, that is, Fire, which naturally suggests to our thoughts the notion of destruction by fire.[32]

In a hymn to Indras, the gods arrive at last, bring their axes, and with their edges destroy the woods, and burn the monsters who restrain the milk in the breasts of the cows.[33] The clouded sky here figures in the imagination as a great forest inhabited by rakshasas, or monsters, which render it unfruitful—that is, which prevent the great celestial cow from giving her milk. The cow that gives the honey, the ambrosial cow of the Vedâs, is thus replaced by a forest which hides the honey, the ambrosia beloved by the gods. And although the Vedic hymns do not dwell much upon this conception of the cloudy-sky, preferring as they do to represent the darkness of night as a gloomy forest, the above passage from the Vedâs is worthy of notice as indicating the existence at least during the Vedic period of a myth which was afterwards largely amplified in zoological legend.[34]

In this threefold battle of Indras, we must, moreover, remark a curious feature. The thunder-dealing Indras overpowers his enemies with arrows and darts; the same cloud which thunders, bellows, and therefore is called a cow, becomes, as throwing darts, a bow: hence we have the cow-bow, from which Indras hurls the iron stone, the thunderbolt; and the cord itself of that bellowing bow is called a cow; from the bow-cow, from the cord-cow, come forth the winged darts, the thunderbolts, called birds, that eat men; and when they come forth, all the world trembles.[35] We shall come upon the same idea again further on.

Thus far we have considered the cow-cloud as a victim of the monster (that Indras comes to subdue). But it is not uncommon to see the cloud itself or the darkness, that is, the cow, the fortress, or the forest represented as a monster. Thus, a Vedic hymn informs us that the monster Valas had the shape of a cow;[36] another hymn represents the cloud as the cow that forms the waters, and that has now one foot, now four, now eight, now nine, and fills the highest heaven with sounds;[37] still another hymn sings that the sun hurls his golden disc in the variegated cow;[38] they who have been carried off, who are guarded by the monster serpent, the waters, the cows, are become the wives of the demons;[39] and they must be malignant, since a poet can use as a curse the wish that the malign spirits, the demons, may drink the poison of those cows.[40] We have already seen that the fortresses are wives of demons, and that the demons possessed the forests.[41]

It is in the beclouded and thundering heavens that the warrior hero displays his greatest