href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@38687@[email protected]#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[48] the luminous Vasavas unbind the cow that is tied by its foot.[49]

How now is this cow brought forth?

This ambrosial cow is created by the artists of the gods, by the three brothers Ṛibhavas, who draw it out of the skin of a cow; that is, they make a cow, and, to give it life, cover it with the skin of a dead cow.[50] It being understood that the cow Aurora (or Spring) dies at even (or in the autumn), the Ṛibhavas, the threefold sun Indras, i.e., the sun in the three watches of the night, prepares the skin of this cow, one Ṛibhus taking off the skin from the dead cow, another Ṛibhus preparing it during the night (or winter), and the third Ṛibhus, in the early morning (or at the end of winter) dressing the new cow, the aurora (or the spring) with it. Thus it is that Indras, in three distinct moments, takes the skin from off the girl that he loves, who had become ugly during the night, and restores her beauty in the morning.[51] And the three Ṛibhavas may, it seems to me, be the more easily identified with the triple Indras, with Indra-Vishṇus, who measures the world in three paces, since, as Indras is called a bull, they also are called bulls;[52] as Indras is often a falcon, they also are named birds;[53] and their miracles are sometimes also those of Indras. This identification of the bulls Ṛibhavas, whom we speak of here as producers of the cow Aurora (the same sterile cow of the sleeping hero Çayus, that which the Açvinâu, the two horsemen of the twilight, restored to youth by the Ṛibhavas, rendered fruitful again),[54] with the bull, or hero Indras, appears to me to be of the greatest importance, inasmuch as it affords us the key to much that is most vital to the Aryan legends.

The Ṛibhavas, then, are three brothers. They prepare themselves to procure the cups which are to serve for the gods to drink out of. Each has a cup in his hand; the eldest brother defies the others to make two cups out of one; the second defies them to make three out of one; the youngest brother comes forward and defies them to make four. The victory is his, and the greatest workman of heaven, the Vedic Vulcan, Tvashtar, praises their wonderful work.[55] The youngest of the three brothers is therefore the most skilful. We find in the Ṛigvedas the name of Sukarmas, or maker of fine works, good workman, given to each of the three brothers; and though only one of them, who is properly called Ṛibhus, or Ṛîbhukshâ, is said to serve the god Indras in the quality of a workman (whence Indras himself sometimes received the name of Ṛibhukshâ, Ṛibhvan, or Ṛibhvas), yet the other two brothers, Vâǵas and Vibhvan, are in the service, one of all the gods, the other of Varuṇas, the god of night.[56] It would seem natural to recognise in Ṛibhus, the protégé of Indras, the most skilful of the three brothers, who, as we have seen above, was the youngest; yet, as we cannot infer anything from the order in which the hymns name the three brothers—as, in one, Vâǵas is first named, then Ṛibhukshâ, and finally Vibhvan; in another, Vâǵas first, Vibhvan second, and Ṛibhus third;[57] in another, again, Ṛibhus is invoked first, then Vibhvan, and lastly Vâǵas; and as we also find all the Ṛibhavas saluted under the common epithet of Vâǵas, and Vâǵas himself by the name of Indras, or rather Indras saluted in his triple form of Ṛibhus, Vibhvan, and Vâǵas,[58] it remains uncertain which of these was the proper name of the third brother of the Ṛibhavas. But what seems to be sufficiently clear is, that Indras is identified with the Ṛibhavas (Indravantas), that the third brother is the most skilful, and that the three brothers serve the lords of heaven as workmen. And here we meet with an interesting element. In two hymns of the Ṛigvedas, the host of the Ṛibhavas appears as one only, Indras himself, or the sun (Savitar), under the name of Agohyas (i.e., who cannot be hidden). During the twelve days (the twelve hours of the night, or the twelve months of the year) in which they are the guests of Agohyas, they bring as they sleep every species of prosperity to the land, by making the fields fertile, causing the rivers to flow, and refreshing the grass of the field. In this, however, let us not forget that they are the beneficent sons of Sudhanvan, the good archer, and archers themselves, representatives of the great celestial archer, of the thunder-dealing and rain-giving Indras; and that therefore their sleep is only a figure of speech to express their latent existence in darkness and the clouds of night. But the Ṛigvedas introduces the three brothers under other names, and especially in one, and that an important aspect. The third brother is called Tritas, or the third, and as such, is also identified with Indras. Thus, for instance, the moments of Indras in the sky are three—evening, night, and towards morning; and the horse of Tritas (the horse that Tritas has received from Yamas) is now mysteriously Yama himself, now the son of Âditis (whom we have already seen to be the cow, or the son of the cow), now Tritas himself, whom Tritas alone can yoke, and Indras alone ride upon, a horse bedewed with ambrosia, which has three relationships in heaven, three in the waters, three in the ocean;[60] that is to say, one relation is Yamas, the elder brother; the second is the son of the cow, or the second brother; the last is Tritas himself, or the youngest brother. This Tritas is called intelligent; he therefore corresponds to the third