The king Hariçćandras has no sons; the god Varuṇas the coverer, the gloomy, the watery, the king of the waters,[219] obliges him to promise that he will sacrifice to him whatever is born to him. The king promises; a child is born, who is named the red (Rohitas). Varuṇas claims him; the father begs him to wait till the child has cut his teeth, then till his first teeth are cast, then till he is able to bear armour. It is evident that the father wishes to wait till his son be strong enough to defend himself against his persecutor, Varuṇas. Varuṇas thereupon claims him in a more resolute manner, and Hariçćandras informs the son himself that he must be given up in sacrifice. Rohitas takes his bow and flees into the woods, where he lives by the chase. This first part of the legend corresponds with those numerous European popular tales, in which, now the devil, now the aquatic monster, now the serpent, demands from a father the son who has just been born to him without his knowledge. The second part of the story of Çunaḥçepas shows us the hero in the forest; he has taken his bow with him, and hence, like Râmas in the Râmâyaṇam, who has scarcely entered the forest than he begins to hunt, Rohitas turns hunter, and hunts for the six years during which he remains in the forest. But his chase is unsuccessful; he wanders about in quest of some one to take his place as the victim of Varuṇas; at last he finds the brâhmaṇas Aġigartas, who consents to give his own second son, Çunaḥçepas, for a hundred cows. The first-born being particularly dear to the father, and the third being especially beloved by the mother, cannot be sacrificed; the second son, therefore, is ceded to Varuṇas, the gloomy god of night, who, like Yamas, binds all creatures with his cords. We have already observed how the middle son is the son of the celestial cow Aditis, the hidden sun, the sun during and covered by the darkness of night, or, in other words, bound by the fetters of Varuṇas—and it is his own father who binds him with those fetters. His sacrifice begins in the evening. During the night he appeals to all the gods. At last Indras, flattered by the praise heaped upon him, concedes to him a golden chariot, upon which, with praises to the Açvinâu, and help from the dawn, Çunaḥçepas, unbound from the fetters of Varuṇas, is delivered. These fetters of Varuṇas, which imprison the victim, bound and sacrificed by his own father, help us to understand the second part of the European popular tale of the son sacrificed against his will to the demon by his father; for Çunaḥçepas, towards the end of the European story, takes the form of a horse, Varuṇas that of a demon, and the fetters of Varuṇas are the bridle of the horse, which the imprudent father sells to the demon, together with his son in the shape of a horse;[220] the beautiful daughter of the demon (the white one, who, as usual, comes out of the black monster) delivers the young man transformed into a horse; as in the Vedic story of Çunaḥçepas, it is explicitly the dawn who is the young girl that delivers.[221] Varuṇas is called in the Râmâyaṇam the god who has in his hand a rope (pâçahastas); his dwelling is on Mount Astas, where the sun goes down, and which it is impossible to touch, because it burns, in an immense palace, the work of Viçvakarman, which has a hundred rooms, lakes with nymphs, and trees of gold.[222] Evidently, Varuṇas is here, not a different form, but a different name of the god Yamas, the pâçin, or furnished with rope, the constrictor par excellence; for we are to suppose the magic display of golden splendour in the evening heavens not so much the work of the sun itself, as produced by the gloomy god who sits on the mountain, who invests and surprises the solar hero, and drags him into his kingdom. As to Hariçćandras and Aġigartas, Rohitas and Çunaḥçepas, they appear, in my opinion, to be themselves different names for not only the same celestial phenomenon, but the same mythical personage. Hariçćandras is celebrated in the legends as a solar king; Rohitas, his son, the red one, is his alter ego, as well as his successor Çunaḥçepas. Hariçćandras, moreover, who promises to sacrifice his son to Varuṇas, seems to differ little, if at all, from Aġigartas, who sells his own son for the sacrifice. The Râmâyaṇam,[223] has given us a third name for the same unnatural father,[224] in Viçvâmitras, who asks his own sons to sacrifice themselves, instead of Çunaḥçepas, who is under his protection, and as they refuse to obey, he curses them.
The variation of the same legend which we find in the Harivanças[225] proves these identities, and adds a new and notable particular. The wife of Viçvâmitras designs, on account of her poverty, to barter her middle son for a hundred cows, and with that view already keeps him tied with a rope like a slave. The grandfather of Rohitas, Hariçćandras's father, Triçañkus, wanders through the woods, and delivers this son of Viçvâmitras, whose family he thenceforth protects and maintains. The deeds of Triçañkus, who begs of Vasishṭas to be allowed to ascend to heaven bodily, and who, by grace of Viçvâmitras, obtains instead the favour of remaining suspended in the air like a constellation, are also attributed to his son Hariçćandras; whence we may affirm, without much risk of contradiction, that as Triçañkus is another name for his son Hariçćandras, so Hariçćandras is another name for his son Rohitas, and that, therefore, the Triçañkus of the Harivaṅças is the same as the Rohitas of the Âitareya, with this difference, that Triçañkus buys the son destined to the sacrifice in order to free him, while Rohitas buys him to free himself. But the first hundred cows given by Triçañkus to Viçvâmitras do not suffice for him, and the fruits of his hunting in the forest are not enough to maintain the family, a circumstance which weighs upon him almost as much as if the family were his own; upon which, in order to save Viçvâmitras, in order to save Viçvâmitras's son, and, we can perhaps add, to save himself, he resolves to sacrifice, to kill the beautiful and dearly-prized wife of Vasishṭas (the very luminous). I have said the wife of Vasishṭas, but the Harivaṅças says, speaking strictly, it was the cow of Vasishṭas who was killed. But we know from the Râmâyaṇam[226] that this cow of Vasishṭas, this kâmadhuk or kâmadhenus, which yields at pleasure all that is wished for, this cow of abundance, is kept by Vasishṭas, under the name of Çabâlâ, as his own wife. Viçvâmitras is covetous of her; he demands her from Vasishṭas, and offers a hundred cows for her, the exact price which, in the Harivaṅças, he receives from Triçañkus for his own son. Vasishṭas answers that he will not give her for a hundred, nor for a thousand, nor even for a hundred thousand cows, for Çabâlâ is his gem, his riches, his all, his life.[227] Viçvâmitras carries her off; she returns to the feet of Vasishṭas, and bellows; her bellowing calls forth armies, who come out of her own body; the hundred sons of Viçvâmitras are burned to ashes by them. These armies which come out of the body of Vasishṭas's cow remind us again of the Vedic cow, from which come forth winged darts, or birds, by which the enemies are filled with terror. Vasishṭas is a form of Indras; his cow is here the rain-cloud. Viçvâmitras, who wishes to ravish the cow from Vasishṭas, often assumes monstrous forms in the Hindoo legends, and is almost always malignant, perverse, and revengeful. His hundred sons burned to cinders by Vasishṭas remind us, from one point of view, of the hundred cities of Çambaras destroyed by Indras, and the hundred perverse Dhṛitarâshtrides of the Mahâbhâratam; whence his name, Viçvâmitras, which may also mean the enemy of all (viçva-amitras), would agree well with his almost demoniacal character.
This story of the cow of Vasishṭas, whose relationship with the legend of Çunaḥçepas cannot be doubted, brings us back to the animal forms of heroes and heroines from which we started. In the story of Vasishṭas, the cow-cloud, the cow çabâlâ, or the spotted-cow, plays in the epic poem the part of the cow Aditis, the cow pṛiçnis (spotted, variegated), with which we are already familiar in the Vedic hymns. This cow is benignant towards the god, or the hero, or the wise Vasishṭas, as the pṛiçnis is to the god Indras. But we have seen in the Ṛigvedas itself the cloud as the enemy of the god, and represented as a female form of the monster, as his sister. This sister generally tries to seduce the god, promising to deliver into his hands the monster her brother, and she sometimes succeeds, as the witch Hidimbâ of the Mahâbhâratam, who gives up her brother, the monster Hidimbas, into the hands of the hero Bhîmas, who thereupon espouses her. On the other hand, Çûrpaṇakhâ, the sister of the monster Râvaṇas, does not succeed in her intent; making herself beautiful, she endeavours to win the affection of the hero Râmas; but being ridiculed by him and by Lakshmaṇas, she becomes deformed, and sends forth cries like a cloud in the rainy season,[228] exciting her brothers to annihilate Râmas.
The same cloud-monster is found again in the Râmâyaṇam, under the name of Dundubhis, in the form of a terrible buffalo with sharpened horns.[229] The buffalo, as a wild animal, is often chosen to represent the principle of evil, in the same way as the bull, increaser of the bovine herds, is selected as the image of good. This bellowing buffalo, whence his name of Dundubhis (drum), strikes and knocks with his two horns at the door of the cavern[230] of the son of Indras (Bâlin), the king of the monkeys. But Bâlin takes Dundubhis by the horns, throws him on the ground, and destroys him.
Dundus is also a name given to the father of Kṛishṇas, or the black one, who in the Ṛigvedas is still a demon, and only later becomes the god of cows and cowherds, a govindas, or pastor par excellence.[231] Indras, his enemy in the Vedas, having fallen from heaven, he became one of the most popular gods, and even sometimes the most popular form of the deity. In the Mahâbhâratam, for instance, he is almost the deus ex machina of the battles between the Pâṇḍavas and the Dhârtarâshṭrâs, and presents many analogies to the Zeus of the Iliad; whereas Indras plays only a part in the episodes, the rain-giver and thunderer being often forgotten for the black one who prepares and hurls the light. But the fall of Indras begins in the Vedâs themselves. In the Yaǵurvedas, Viçvarûpas, the son of Tvashṭar, whom Indras kills, appears as no less than the purohitas or high-priest of the gods, and son of a daughter of the Asurâs; he has three heads, of which one drinks the ambrosia, another the spirituous drink, while the third eats food. Indras cuts off Viçvarûpas's three heads, in revenge of the one which drinks his ambrosia; he is therefore charged with having killed a Brâhman, and decried as a brâhmanicide.[232] In the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam,[233] the criminality of Indras in this regard is confirmed, to which the Kâushîtaki-Upanishad also refers. In the seventh book of the Râmâyaṇam, even the multiform monster Râvaṇas is represented as a great penitent, whom Brâhman fills with supreme grace; in the sixth book, the son of the wind, Hanumant, cuts off the three heads of the Râvanide monster Triçiras (having three heads), as one day Indras cut off the three heads of the monster Vṛitras, son of Tvashṭar;[234] and he cuts all the three heads off together (samas), as the hero of the European popular tales must cut off, at a blow, the three heads of the serpent, the wizard, otherwise he is powerless, and able to do nothing. The monster, like the hero, seems to have a special affinity for the number three: hence the three heads of Triçiras, as also the three brothers of Lañkâ—Râvaṇas, the eldest brother, who reigns; Kumbhakarṇas, the middle brother, who sleeps; Vibhishaṇas, the third brother, whom the two others do not care about, but who alone is just and good, and who alone obtains the gift of immortality.[235] We have evidently here again the three Vedic brothers; the two eldest in demoniacal form, the youngest a friend of the divine hero, and who, by the victory of Râmas over the monster Râvaṇas, obtains the kingdom of Lañkâ. As to the brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, and the brothers Bâlin and Sugrîvas, their natural place is in the story of the two twins, which will be referred to in the next chapter, although Hanumant, the son of the wind, figures second to them in the character of strong brother.
The three interesting heroic brothers come out more prominently in the Mahâbhâratam, where of the five Pâṇdavas brothers, three stay on one side, and are Yudhishṭhiras, son of the god Yamas, the wise brother; Bhîmas (the terrible), or Vṛikodâras (wolf's belly), son of Vâyus (the wind), the strong brother (another form of Hanumant, in company with whom he is also found in the Mahâbhâratam, on Mount Gandhamâdanas); and Argunas (the splendid), the son of Indras, the genial, dexterous, fortunate, victorious brother, he who wins the bride. The first brother gives the best advice; the second shows proof of greatest strength; the third brother wins, conquers the bride. They are precisely the three Vedic brothers Ṛibhavas, Ekatas, Dvîtas, and Tritas, in the same relationships to one another and with the same natures; only the legend is amplified.[236] As to their other brothers, twins, born of another mother, Nakulas and Sahadevas, they are the sons of the two Açvinâu, and feebly repeat in the Mahâbhâratam the exploits of the two celestial twins. Bhîmas or Vṛikodâras, the second brother, is considered the strongest, (balavatâṁ çreshthaḥ), because immediately after birth, i.e., scarcely has he come forth out of his mother (like the Vedic Marutas), than he breaks the rock upon which he falls, because he breaks his fetters as soon as he is bound with them (like Hanumant when he becomes the prisoner of Râvaṇas), because he carries his brothers during the night (as Hanumant carries Râmas), as he flees from the burning house prepared by the impious Duryodhanas (i.e., from the burning sky of evening), and because in the kingdom of serpents, where Duryodhanas threw him down (that is, the night), he drinks the water of strength. A serpent, wishing to benefit Bhîmas, says to Vasukis, king of the serpents—"Let there be given to him as much strength as he can drink from that cistern in which is placed the strength of a thousand serpents."[237] Bhîmas, at one draught, drinks the whole cisternful; and with similar expedition, he drains consecutively eight cisterns.[238] The first-born of the Pânḍavas is dear to his father Yamas, the god of justice, Dharmarâǵas,—and is himself indeed called Dharmarâǵas; and when he prepares himself to ascend into heaven, the god Yamas follows him in the form of a dog: by his skill in solving enigmas, he saves his brother Bhîmas from the king of the serpents. The third brother, Arǵunas, son of Indras, is the Benjamin of the Vedic supreme God. Indras welcomes him with festivals in heaven, whither Arǵunas had gone to find him. Arǵunas is an infallible archer, like Indras; like Indras, he several times regains the cows from the robbers or from the enemies; and, like Indras, he wins and conquers his bride; he is born by the assistance of all the celestials; he is invincible (aġayas); he is the best son (varaḥ putras);[239] he alone of the three brothers has compassion on his master Droṇas and delivers him from an aquatic monster.[240]
But there is yet another particular which shows the resemblance between the three brothers Pâṇḍavas and the three brothers of the Vedas; it is their dwelling, hidden in the palace of the king Virâṭa, in the fourth book of the Mahâbhâratam. They are exiled from the kingdom, like Râmas; they flee from the persecution of their enemies, now into the woods, now, as the Ṛibhavas, disguised as workmen in the palace of Virâṭas, to whom their presence brings every kind of happiness.
We meet with these three brothers again, episodically, in the three disciples of Dhâumyas, in the first book of the Mahâbhâratam.[241] The first disciple, Upamanyus, takes his master's cows out to pasture, and, out of sensitive regard for his master's interest, refuses to drink not only their milk, but even the foam from their mouths, and fasts till, like to perish of hunger, he bites a leaf of arkapatrâ (properly, leaf of the sun, the aristolochia indica), when he instantly becomes blind. He wanders about and falls into a well; he there sings a hymn to the Açvinâu, and they come immediately to deliver him. The second brother, Uddâlakas, places his body, as a dike, to arrest the course of the waters. The third brother is Vedas, he who sees, he who knows, whose disciple Utañkas is himself in the form of a hero. Utañkas, like the Vedic Tritas, and the Pâṇḍavas Arǵuṇas, is protected by Indras. He is sent by the wife of his master to abstract the earrings of the wife of King Pâushyas. He sets out; on his way he meets a gigantic bull, and a horseman, who bids him, if he would succeed, eat the excrement of the bull; he does so, rinsing his mouth afterwards. He then presents himself to King Pâushyas and informs him of his message; the king consigns the earrings to him, but cautions him to beware of Takshakas, the king of the serpents. Utañkas says that he is not afraid of him, and sets out with the earrings; but as he puts down the earrings upon the shore, in order to bathe, Takshakas presents himself in the shape of a naked mendicant, whips them up, and flees away with them. Utañkas follows him, but Takshakas resumes his serpent form, penetrates the ground, and descends under it; Utañkas attempts to follow the serpent, but does not succeed in cleaving the entrance, which corresponds to the Vedic rock under which the monster keeps his prey. Indras sees him tiring himself in vain, and sends his weapon, in order that it may be for a help to Utañkas; that weapon, or club, penetrating, opened the cavern.[242] This club, this weapon of Indras is evidently the thunderbolt.[243] Utañkas descends into the kingdom of the serpents, full of infinite wonders. Indras reappears at his side in the shape of a horse,[244] and obliges the king, Takshakas, to give back the earrings; having taken which, Utañkas mounts the horse, that he may be carried more swiftly to the wife of his master, from whom he learns that the horseman seen by him on the way was none other than Indras himself; his horse, Agnis, the god of fire; the bull, the steed of Indras, or the elephant Âiravatas; the excrement of the bull, the ambrosia, which made him immortal in the kingdom of the serpents. In another episode of the same (the first) book of the Mahâbhâratam,[245] we again find Indras busied in the search of the earrings, that is to say, of the excessively fleshy part hanging from the ears of Karṇas, the child of the sun, who, as soon as born, had been abandoned upon the waters. We have seen above how the two Açvinâu are also represented in the Râmâyaṇam as the two ears of Vishṇus Râmas (as the sun and moon are said to be his eyes); hence it seems to me that these mythical earrings, coveted by Indras, and protected by him, are nothing else than the two Açvinâu, the two luminous twilights (in connection with the sun and the moon), in which Indras, and, still more than he, the aurora, his wife, take such delight.[246] In the commentary of Buddhagoshas on the Buddhist Dhammapadam, we have the three brothers again; the two eldest are represented as fleeing from the persecution of their cruel step-mother; the third brother, Suriyas (Sûryas, the sun), goes to overtake them. The eldest counsels or commands, the second lends his aid, and the youngest fights. The second and third brothers fall into a fountain, under the power of a monster; the first-born saves them by his knowledge, as, in the Mahâbhâratam, Yudhishṭhiras, by his skill in solving riddles, delivers the second brother from the fetters of the forest of the monster serpent.
This mode of delivering the hero, by propounding a question or a riddle, is very common in the Hindoo legends. Even in the Pańćatantram,[247] a Brâhman who falls under the power of a forest monster who leaps on his shoulders, frees himself by asking why his feet are so soft. The monster confesses that it is because, on account of a vow, he cannot touch the earth with his feet. The Brâhman then betakes himself to a sacred pond; the monster wishes to take a bath, and the Brâhman throws him in; the monster orders him to stay there till he has bathed and said his orisons. The Brâhman profits by this opportunity to make his escape, knowing that the monster will not be able to overtake him, as he cannot put his feet to the ground. It is the usual vulnerability, weakness, or imperfection of the hero, or the monster, in the feet, and, if an animal is spoken of, in the tail.[248] The Mahâbhâratam has shown us the three Vedic brothers, of whom the youngest has fallen into the well; it also presents to us, in the witch (asurî) Çarmishṭhâ, daughter of Vṛishaparvan, king of the demons, and in the nymph Devayânî, daughter of Çukras, who credits herself with the virtue of Indras as the rain-giver,[249] the two rival sisters of the Vedas, the good and the evil. In the Râmâyaṇam,[250] the witch Çûrpanakhâ, who seduces Râmas, in order to take the place of Sîtâ at his side, is compared to Çarmishṭhâ, who seduced Nâhushas. In the Mahâbhâratam, Çarmishṭhâ assumes the guise of Devayânî, whom she throws into a well. Yayâtis, son of King Nâhushas, goes to the chase; feeling thirsty, he stops near the well; from the bottom of the well a young girl looks up, like a flame of fire.[251] The prince takes her by the right hand and draws her up; and because in the marriage ceremony, the bride is taken by the right hand,[252] the prince Yayâtis is said to marry Devayânî. But even after she is a wife, Çarmishṭhâ continues to seduce her husband, to whom she unites herself. Two sons are born of Devayânî, Yadus and Turvasas, similar to Indras and Vishṇus (a new form of the twins, of the Açvinâu); three are born of Çarmishṭhâ, Duhyus, Anus, and Pûrus; and here also the third brother is the most glorious and valiant. And in this way the episode is connected with the essential legend of the Mahâbhâratam, and one and the same general myth is multiplied into an infinity of particular legends. As the genealogy of the gods and heroes is infinite, so is there an infinite number of forms assumed by the same myth and of the names assumed by the same hero. Each day gave birth in the heavens to a new hero and a new monster, who exterminate each other, and afterwards revive in an aspect more or less glorious, according as their names were more or less fortunate.
It is for the same reason that the sons always recognise their fathers without having once seen them or even heard them spoken of; they recognise themselves in their fathers. Thus Çakuntalâ and Urvacî enable their mother to find again the husband that she has lost, and their father to recover his lost wife. Thus in the episode of Devayânî and Çarmishṭhâ, when the former wishes to know who is the father of the three sons of Çarmishṭhâ, so similar to the sons of immortals, she turns to them, and they tell her at once.