strength; but it cannot be denied that the great majority of the myths, and the most poetical, exemplify or represent the relation between the nocturnal sky (now dark, tenebrous, watery, horrid, wild, now lit up by the ambrosial moon-beams, and now bespangled with stars) and the two glowing skies—the two resplendent ambrosial twilights of morning and evening (of autumn and spring). We have here the same general phenomenon of light and darkness engaged in strife; here, again, the sun Indras is hidden, as though in a cloud, to prepare the light, to recover from the monster of darkness the waters of youth and light, the riches, the cows, which he keeps concealed; but this conquest is only made by the hero after long wandering amidst many dangers, and is finally accomplished by battles, in which the principal credit is often due to a heroine; except in those cases, not frequent but well worthy of remark, in which the clouds, hurricanes, tempests of lightning and thunderbolts, coincide with the end of the night (or of winter), and the sun Indras, by tearing the clouds, at the same time disperses the darkness of night and brings dawn (or spring) back to the sky. In such coincidences, the sun Indras, besides being the greatest of the gods, reveals himself to be also the most epic of the heroes; the two skies, the dark and the clouded, with their relative monsters, and the two suns, the thundering and the radiant, with their relative companions, are confounded, and the myth then assumes all its poetical splendour. And the most solemn moments of the great national Aryan epic poems, the Râmâyaṇam and the Mahâbhâratam, the Book of Kings, as well as those of the Iliad, the Song of Roland and the Nibelungen, are founded upon this very coincidence of the two solar actions—the cloudy and shadowy monster thunderstruck, and the dawn (or spring) delivered and resuscitated. In truth, the Ṛigvedas itself, in a passage already quoted,[42] tells us that the clouds—the three times seven spotted cows—cause their milk to drop to a god (whom, from another similar passage,[43] we know to be Indras, the sun) in the eastern sky (pûrve vyomani), that is, towards the morning, and sometimes towards the spring, many of the phenomena of which correspond to those of the aurora. The Pṛiçnayas, or spotted ones, are beyond doubt the clouds, as the Marutas, sons of Pṛiçnis, or the spotted one, are the winds that howl and lighten in the storm cloud. It is therefore necessary to carry back the cloudy sky towards the morning, to understand the Pṛiçnayas feeding the sun Indras in the eastern heavens and the seven Añgirasas, the seven sunbeams, the seven wise men, who also sing hymns in the morning;—it seems to me that the hymn of these fabled wise men can be nothing else than the crash of the thunderbolts, which, as we have already seen, are supposed to be detached from the solar rays. Allusions to Indras thundering in the morning are so frequent in the Vedic hymns, that I hope to be excused for this short digression, from which I must at once return, because my sole object here is to treat in detail of the mythical animals, and because the road we have to take will be a long one.

Even the luminous night has its cows; the stars, which the sun puts to flight with his rays,[44] are cows: the cows themselves, whose dwellings the dwellings of the sun's cows must adjoin, are called the many-horned ones.[45] These dwellings seem to me worthy of passing remark, they are the celestial houses that move, the enchanted huts and palaces that appear, disappear, and are transformed so often in the popular stories of the Aryans.

The moon is generally a male, for its most popular names, Ćandras, Indus, and Somas are masculine; but as Somas signifies ambrosia, the moon, as giver of ambrosia, soon came to be considered a milk-giving cow; in fact, moon is one among the various meanings given in Sanskrit to the word gâus (cow). The moon, Somas, who illumines the nocturnal sky, and the pluvial sun, Indras, who during the night, or the winter, prepares the light of morn, or spring, are represented as companions; a young girl, the evening, or autumnal, twilight, who goes to draw water towards night, or winter, finds in the well, and takes to Indras, the ambrosial moon, that is, the Somas whom he loves. Here are the very words of the Vedic hymn:—"The young girl, descending towards the water, found the moon in the fountain, and said: 'I will take you to Indras, I will take you to Çakras; flow, O moon, and envelop Indras.'"[46] The moon and ambrosia in the word indus, as well as somas, are confounded with one another; hence, Indras, the drinker par excellence of somas (somapâtamas), is also the best friend and companion of the ambrosial or pluvial moon, and so the sun and moon (as also Indras and Vishṇus) together come to suggest to us the idea of two friends, two brothers (Indus and Indras), two twins, the two Açvinâu; often the two twilights, properly speaking, the morning and the evening, the spring and the autumn, twilights, the former, however, being especially associated with the red sun which appears in the morning (or in the spring), and the latter with the pale moon which appears in the evening (or in the autumn, as a particular regent of the cold season). Indras and Somas (Indrâsomâu) are more frequently represented as two bulls who together discomfit the monster (rakshohaṇâu), who destroy by fire the monsters that live in darkness.[47] The word vṛishaṇâu properly means the two who pour out, or fertilise. Here it means the two bulls; but as the word vṛishan signifies stallion as well as bull, the two stallions, the vṛishaṇâu Indras and Somas, are, by a natural transition, soon transformed into two horses or horsemen, the two Açvinâu. Hence, in popular tales, we find near the young princess the hero, who now leads out the cows to pasture, and now, as hostler or groom, takes excellent care of the horses. But we must not anticipate comparisons which we shall have to make further on. Having noticed that, in the Ṛigvedas, we find the moon represented either as a bull or a cow (the masculine, Indus, somas, ćandras, is always a bull; while the feminine, râkâ, suggests more naturally the idea of a cow), let us now consider the bull Indras in relation to the cow Aurora (or spring).

Five bulls stand in the midst of the heavens, and chase out of the way the wolf who crosses the waters;