make the discovery only to see him vanish from her sight. Now would remain for her the weary search, in which she would find herself oppressed by a series of impossible tasks laid on her by her stepmother. But her kindliness to all living things gains for her the gratitude of birds and beasts, which enable her to accomplish them; and her undaunted devotion is at length rewarded.

Among the most beautiful versions of the tale thus suggested is the story of Urvasî as given in the drama of Kalidasa,' entitled Vikramorvasî. The name is XIII.Urvasi. as transparent as that of Selênê or Asterodia. In the Vedic hymns the dawn is spoken of both as Urukî, the far-going, and as Uruasî, the wide-spreading; and these names have their counterpart in the Greek Euryanassa, Euryphassa, Eurôpê, and many others. As such, she is the mother of Vasishtha, the son of Mitra and Varuna.2 Urvasî, then, is wedded to Pururavas, the gleaming one,3 on the condition that she is never to see him unclothed. Tempted by the Gandharvas, Pururavas rises from his couch; a flash of lightning reveals the splendour of his form; and Urvasî vanishes away, to be united to him again on the last day of the year.

Eros and

In this story the sun has to seek for the dawn. The beautiful tale of Eros and Psyche brings before us the search of the dawn for the sun; but there is little difference in the framework of the story. The Psyche. name Psyche denotes simply the breath of all living things; and, as such, she is naturally the bride of Eros, the lord of love, whose unveiled splendour would be too dazzling even for her eyes to rest upon. She believes that she is wedded to the most glorious of all living beings; but a doom is laid on her by Aphroditê, and she brings about her own punishment. Being assured by her sisters that her husband, whom she never sees except when he comes to 2 See p. 33.

A Hindu poet of the first or second century B.C.

* The name answers to the meaning of the Greek Polydeukes.

1

visit her at night, is a hideous monster, she takes a lamp and, gazing upon her lover, sees before her the perfection of beauty. A drop of oil falls on the sleeping god, and the brief happiness of Psyche is ended. Eos has looked on Helios, and Helios has plunged beneath the sea. If she would be united with him again, she must seek him amidst many perils and at the cost of vast labour. At last she finds him in the dwelling of Aphroditê, at whose bidding she accomplishes some hard and degrading tasks, under which she must have sunk had it not been for the love of Eros, who, though invisible, still consoled and cheered her. By his aid she at length made her peace with his mother, and becoming immortal, was united with her lover for ever. Thus the stories of Urvasî and Psyche exhibit the same leading features which are common to the German stories of Grimm's collection entitled the Soaring Lark, the Twelve Brethren, the White Snake, the Golden Bird, the Queen Bee, to the Norse tale of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and many others.

and dawn

myths.

This myth may be referred to the succession either of night and day or of the seasons. In the former case we Northern sun should have a series of tales, more or less in accordance with the two just mentioned; in the latter they would agree with the general spirit of the legend of Dêmêtêr and Persephonê. All receive a local colouring and local features according to the climate of the countries with which they are associated. In the north, before the Dawn or Summer child can be won, there must be a battle with the powers of frost and snow; mountains of glass must be scaled, castles of ice must be thrown down, and huge icebergs moved out of the way. In these tasks the seeker is aided by bears, wolves, or foxes, by ducks or swans, eagles or ants, who are grateful to him for past kindness; but all these are names which in the old mythical language denoted the clouds, the winds, or the light. In Eastern and Western traditions alike, the clouds assume

the forms of eagles and swans; and these creatures soon remove the huge heaps of grain, stones, and ice, and thus bring about the meeting of the lovers.

Ushas and the

In the glowing land of the East these tales are necessarily less prominent than in the West. Their place was taken by those pictures of the daily phenomena XIV. Ushas. of dawn and sunlight, which were gradually over- Panis. loaded with the cumbersome details of later Hindu mythology. But in their earlier shapes they bring before us forms closely corresponding to those of the chief inhabitants of the Greek mythical world. How thoroughly Ushas was the morning, and how at the same time she was a being greeted with the affection and love of mankind, we have already seen;1 and it is only necessary to add that in all that is said of her we can scarcely be said to advance beyond the stage of primary or organic myths.2 The phrases addressed to her for the most part state facts which it is impossible to dispute.

'Ushas, nourishing all, comes daily like a matron, conducting all transient creatures to decay.'

'The divine and ancient Ushas, born again and again, and bright with unchanging hues, wastes away the life of a mortal, like the wife of a hunter cutting up the birds.'

'Those mortals who beheld the pristine Ushas dawning have passed away; to us she is now visible, and they approach who will behold her in after times.'

Unimpeding divine rites, although wearing away the ages of mankind, the Dawn shines the likeness of the mornings that have passed, or that are to be for ever, the first of those that are to come.' 3

We still have before us the primeval mythical speech, when we read the plain and artless statements that 'the night prepares a birthplace for her sister, the day, and having made it known to her departs,' and that the night and dawn

See p. 29.

2 See p. 9.

› R. V. Sanhita, i. 129, 274, 298; ii. 8. 10. H. H. Wilson.

' of various complexions, repeatedly born but ever youthful, have traversed in their revolutions alternately from a remote period earth and heaven-night with her dark, dawn with her luminous limbs.' But the germs of the first myths are seen in the phrases which tell us that, as the daughter of Dyaus, she goes before Indra, Savitar, and Sûrya; that she opens the ends of heaven, where the thievish Panis had hidden away the cows of which she is the mother; that she shows the Angiras where they are to be found, and drives her own herds to their pastures. The conception of Ushas thus approaches nearly to that of the Greek Athênê or the Latin Minerva. She brings light, and she is the possessor of knowledge. Hence she is said to enable men to cross the frontier of darkness, and, as the seer, to give light far and wide. She is also the mother of the Divine Night, who reveals her splendours after she has driven away her sister the Twilight; and lastly, like Athênê, she is spoken of as sprung from the forehead of Dyaus, the sky.

But Ushas is also Ahanâ, the burning light, which reappears in Athênê and Daphnê.3 She is also Saramâ, and XV. Ahana, Saranyu, the being who creeps along the heaven." and Sarama. In the Rig Veda, Saramâ is the keeper of the cows of Indra, the clouds; and as his messenger she is sent to the Panis, who have stolen them. Like Ushas, she is first to spy out the cleft in the rock where the robbers had hidden them, and, like Herakles in the story of Cacus, the first to hear their lowings. It is only, therefore, what we might expect, when we are told that, like Ushas, Saramâ is followed by Indra; that both go to the uttermost ends of heaven; that both break the strongholds of the robbers;

1 R. V. Sanhita, ii. 12; i. 169. H. H. Wilson.

2 The Sanskrit budh (Gr. olda, Lat. vidi, Eng. wit) means both to make clear and to know.

3 Referred to a root da, to burn, which is found also in Gr. dats, Lat. tæda, a torch.

• These names contain the root sar, to creep, round which are grouped the Greek Erinys and Sarpedon. The verbal forms are in Greek pπw, in Latin repo and serpo. The transliteration of Saramâ into Greek gives us Helenê.

SARANYU.

59° and that both are the mothers and deliverers of the cows. In the Vedic hymns the Panis try to bribe her by the offering of part of the cattle which they have stolen; but Saramâ steadily refuses. In the later Anukramanika, or index to the Veda, Saramâ is spoken of as the dog of the gods who is sent to seek for the stolen herds, and who, although she refuses to share the booty with the Panis, yet drinks a cup of milk which they give her, and, returning to Indra, denies that she has seen the cows. It is possible that we have here the germ of the notion which took a more definite shape in the Western traditions of the faithlessness of Helen, in whom the name of Saramâ is reproduced,' although the interpretation given by Helen herself to her epithet Kunôpis in the Iliad is clearly wrong.

2

Ushas, again, is Saranyû, the feminine of Saranyu, the horse; and, like Ushas, Saranyû is the mare, and the mother of the twin Asvins or steeds, who represent XVI. the Hellenic Dioskouroi, Kastor and Polydeukes Saranyu. (Pollux). Thus with Saranyû she takes her place Harpies; Atê. by the side of the two Ahans or Dawns, of the two Indras, the two Agnis, the two Varunas, and the rest of the great company of correlative deities. But Saranyû, transliterated into Greek, is Erinys; and we have to mark the astonishing difference which these two beings exhibit in the East and in the West. There would in the form of thought of the Vedic hymns be no euphemism in speaking of the Erinyes as Eumenides or gentle beings; and we may be sure that it was not euphemism which first led the Greeks to give them that title. It was assigned to them as naturally as to Dyava-Matar, or Demeter; and it must not be forgotten that these beings, fearful as they were to others, were always benignant to Edipus, and that to him their sacred grove was as the Hyperborean gardens, into which grief and anguish could never enter. There is nothing astonishing in the change. In the Iliad and Odyssey the

1 See Myth. Ar. Nat., vol. i. Appendix E.

2 See note 2, p. 40.