They who return from the funeral must touch the stone of Priapus, a fire, the excrement of a cow,[152] a grain of barley, a grain of sesame and water,—all symbols of that fecundity which the contact with a corpse might have destroyed.
The Vedic hymns have shown us the principal mythical aspects and functions of the cow and the bull; we have also seen how the brâhmanic codes confirmed, by the sanction of law, the worship of these animals, and how jealously the domestic tradition of the Hindoos has guarded it. Let us now see from the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam, how the Brâhmans themselves, those of the era immediately following that of the Vedâs, interpreted the myth of the cow.
We have recognised in the Vedic heavens, as reflected in the hymns of the Ṛigvedas, three cows—the cow-cloud, the cow-moon, and the cow-aurora. These three cows, and especially the first and the third, are also quite distinct from one another in the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam.
It tells us how the gâuh pṛiçnih, the variegated cow, or spotted cow, of the Ṛigvedas, must be celebrated to make the earth fruitful[153] (or that one must sing to the cloud that it may fertilise the pastures and fields with rain), and how one must sacrifice a bull to Viçvakarman (or the one that does all), who is transformed into the god Indras when killing the demon Vṛitras,[154] or the monster who keeps the rain in the cloud.
It shows us the full moon, Râkâ, joined to the aurora, as a source of abundance,[155] and the aurora with the cow.[156] It tells us explicitly that the characteristic form of the aurora is the red cow, because she moves with the red cows.[157] The gods, after having discovered the cows in the cavern, open the cavern with the third libation of the morning;[158] when the cows come out, the gods, the Âdityâs, also come out; hence the coming forth of the gods (Âdityânâm ayanam) is equivalent to the coming forth of the cows (gavâm ayanam). The cows come out when they have their horns, and adorn themselves.[159]
The aurora is a cow; this cow has horns; her horns are radiant and golden. When the cow aurora comes forth, all that falls from her horns brings good luck; hence in the Mahâbhâratam,[160] the benefits received from a holy hermit, called Matañgas, are compared to those of a gavâm ayanam, i.e., a coming out of cows. To understand this simile, besides a reference to the Vedic texts, it is necessary to compare it with the modern usages of India, in which, in celebration of the new solar year, or the birth of the pastoral god Kṛishṇas (the god who is black during the night, but who becomes luminous in the morning among the cows of the dawning, or among the female cowherds), it is customary, towards the end of December, to give cows to the Brâhmans, exchange presents of cows and calves, besprinkle one another with milk, to adorn a beautiful milch cow, crown her with flowers, gild her horns, or paint them various colours, to deck her to overloading with flowers, fruit, and little cakes, and then hunt her from the village to the sound of drums and trumpets, in order that, full of terror, she may flee away with distraction and impetuosity. The cow loses her ornaments in her flight, and these, being estimated as propitious treasures, are eagerly picked up by the faithful, and preserved as sacred relics.[161]
In the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam,[162] the sun is born of the cows (goǵâ), is the son of the cow aurora; as the sun's mother she naturally nourishes him with her milk; hence the same Âitareya[163] tells us that the gods Mitras and Varuṇas, by means of the curdled milk, took from the drink of the gods the inebriating poison which the long-tongued witch (Dîrghaǵihvî) had poured into it. This curdled milk is the same milky sea, with health-giving herbs scattered in it, and which the gods agitate to form ambrosia, in the Râmâyaṇam, the Mahâbhâratam, and the Puranic legends; a sea and herbs which we find already spoken of together in a Vedic hymn.[164] But in the sky, where the ambrosial milk and the health-giving herbs are produced, there are gods and demons; and the milk, which is at one time the rain, at another ambrosia, is now in the cloud, now in the moon (called also Oshadhipatis, or lord of herbs), now round the dawn. Hanumant, who, in the Râmâyaṇam, goes in quest of the health-giving grass to restore their souls to the half-dead heroes, looks for it now between the mountain bull (ṛishabhas) and the heavenly mountain Kâilasas, now between the Mount Lunus (Çandras) and the mountain cup (Droṇas); and the mountain which possesses the herb for which Hanumant is searching is itself called herb (oshadhis), or the one that causes to rejoice with perfumes (Gandhamâdanas[165]), which two words are used synonymously. Here the milky, ambrosial, and healthful humour is supposed to be produced, not by a cow, but by an herb. And the gods and demons contend in heaven for the possession of this herb, as well as for the ambrosia; the only difference being that the gods enjoy both one and the other without corrupting them, whilst the demons poison them as they drink them; that is to say, they spread darkness over the light, they move about in the darkness, in the gloomy waters, in the black humour which comes out of the herb itself, which, in contact with them, becomes poisonous, so that they in turn suck the poison. On the other hand, the Gandharvâs,[166] an amphibious race, in whom at one time the nature of the gods predominates, at another that of the demons, and who consequently take now the side of the gods, now that of the demons, are simply guards who, as against theft, keep watch and ward over the perfumes and healthful herbs, which are their own property, and the healthful or ambrosial waters, the ambrosia which belongs to their wives, the nymphs; they are, in a word, the earliest representatives of the enjoying and jealous proprietor. We have already heard, in the Ṛigvedas, the demoniacal monsters call on each other to suck the poison of the celestial cows; and we have seen that the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam accuses a witch of being the poisoner of the divine ambrosia; we have, moreover, noticed that a Vedic hymn already associates together the ambrosial milk and the healthful herb, and that, in the brâhmanic cosmogony, the milk and the herb which produces it are manifested together, which herb or grass is beneficent or the reverse according as the gods or the demons enjoy it; from all which it will be easy to understand this interesting Hindoo proverb, "The grass gives the milk to the cows, and the milk gives the poison to the serpents."[167] It is indeed the milk of the cow of the dawn and of the cow of the moon which destroys the serpents of darkness, the demoniacal shadows of night.
But the idea of the healthful herb is incorporated in another image, very familiar to the popular Indo-European legends, and which is contained even in the Vedic hymns. The cow produces the sun and the moon; the circular shape, the disc of sun and moon, suggests variously the idea of a ring, a gem, and a pearl; and the sun, Savitar, he who gives the juice, and the generator, is introduced in a Vedic hymn, as the one who has immortal juice, who gives the pearl.[168] The humours of the cow have passed to the herb, and from the herb to the pearl; and the naturalness of this figure recommends itself to our modern conception, for when we would describe a diamond or other gem as of the purest quality, we say it is a diamond or gem of the first water. Even the pearl-moon and the pearl-sun, from their ambrosial humours, have a fine water. In the Râmâyaṇam,[169] at the moment of production of ambrosia from the stirring up of the milky sea, we see, near the healthful herb, the gem Kâustubhas, the same which we afterwards find on the breast of the sun-god Vishṇus, and which is sometimes his navel; whence Vishṇus, in the Mahâbhâratam,[170] is saluted by the name of ratnanâbhas—that is to say, he who has a pearl for his navel; as the sun is in like manner saluted by the name of Maṇịçṛiñgas—i.e., who has horns of pearls.[171] In the Râmâyaṇam,[172] the bright-shining grass and the solar disc appear together on the summit of the mountain Gandhamâdanas; no sooner does he smell its odour than the solar hero Lakshmaṇas, delivered from the iron that oppressed him, lifts himself up from the ground; i.e., scarcely has the sun formed his disc, and begun to shine like a celestial gem, than the sun-hero, whom the monsters had vanquished during the night, rises in victory. And it is on the summit of the mountain that, with a mountain metal of a colour similar to that of the young sun,[173] the sun Râmas imprints a dazzling mark on the forehead of the dawn Sîtâ, as if to be able to recognise her—that is to say, he places himself upon the forehead of the aurora or dawn. When the sun Râmas is separated from the dawn Sîtâ, he sends her in recognition, as a symbol of his disc, his own ring, which appears again in the famous ring given by King Dushmantas to the beautiful Çakuntalâ, the daughter of the nymph, and by means of which alone the lost bride can be recognised by the young and forgetful king; and Sîtâ sends back to Râmas, by the hands of Hanumant, as a sign of recognition, the dazzling ornament which Râmas had one day placed upon her forehead in an idyllic scene among the mountains known to them alone. This ring of recognition, this magic pearl, often turns up in the Hindoo legends. It is enough for me to indicate here the two most famous examples.
The aurora who possesses the pearl becomes she who is rich in pearls, and herself a source of pearls; but the pearl, as we have already seen, is not only the sun, it is also the moon. The moon is the friend of the aurora; she comforts her in the evening under her persecutions; she loads her with presents during the night, accompanies and guides her, and helps her to find her husband.
In the Râmâyaṇam, I frequently find the moon as a beneficent fairy, who succours the dawn Sîtâ; for the moon, as ráganîkaras (she who gives light to the night), assumes a benignant aspect. We have already said that the moon is generally a male in India; but as full moon and new moon it assumes, even in the Vedic texts, a feminine name. In a Vedic hymn, Râkâ, the full moon is exhorted to sew the work with a needle that cannot be broken.[174] Here we have the moon personified as a marvellous workwoman, a fairy with golden fingers, a good fairy; and in this character we find her again in the Râmâyaṇam, under the form of the old Anasûyâ, who anoints the darkened Sîtâ (for Sîtâ, like the Vedic girl, is dark and ugly during the night, or winter, when she is hidden) in the wood, with a divine unguent; gives her a garland, various ornaments, and two beauteous garments, which are always pure (as, i.e., they do not touch the earth, like the cows of the Vedic dawn, who do not cover themselves with dust), and similar in colour to the young sun;[175] in all which the fairy moon appears as working during the night for the aurora, preparing her luminous garments—the two garments, of which the one is for the evening and the other for the morning, one lunar and of silver, the other solar and of gold—in order that she may please her husband Râmas, or the sun Vishṇus, who is glad when he sees her thus adorned. In the Svayamprabhâ, too, we meet with the moon as a good fairy, who, from the golden palace which she reserves for her friend Hemâ (the golden one), is during a month the guide, in the vast cavern, of Hanumant and his companions, who have lost their way in the search of the dawn Sîtâ. To come out of this cavern, it is necessary to shut the eyes, in order not to see its entrance; all Hanumant's companions are come out, but Taras, who shines like the moon,[176] would wish to return. The same moon can be recognised in the benignant fairies Triǵâtâ, Suramâ, and Saramâ, who announce to Sîtâ that her husband will soon arrive, and that she will soon see him. The first, while the arrival of Râmas is imminent, dreams that the monsters, dressed in yellow, are playing in a lake of cow's milk;[177] at the time when Suramâ announces to Sîtâ the approach of Râmas, Sîtâ shines by her own beauty, like the opening dawn;[178] finally, Saramâ (who seems to be the same as Suramâ), whom Sîtâ calls her twin-sister (sahodarâ), penetrating underground, like the moon Proserpine, also announces to Sîtâ her approaching deliverance at the hands of Râmas.[179] As to Triǵaṭâ, it is not difficult to recognise in her the moon, when we remember that Trǵiaṭas is a name which is frequently given to the evening sun, or rising moon, Çivas, who is represented with the moon for a diadem, whence his other name of Çandraćûḍas (having the moon for his diadem). Suramâ I believe to be, not a mythical, but only an orthographical variation, and more incorrect one, of Saramâ, whose relation to the moon we shall see in detail when we come to the chapter which treats of the mythical dog.