[Second Part.]
THE ANIMALS OF THE AIR.
[CHAPTER I.]
BIRDS.
SUMMARY.
The sky-atmosphere and the sky-tree.—The sun, the Açvinâu, Indras, the Marutas, and Agnis as birds.—Indras cuts off the wings of the mountains.—Indras and Somas as two birds hovering round the same tree of honey.—The wisdom of birds.—The birds requested to sacrifice themselves to fulfil the duties of hospitality, refuse.—The dviǵas bird and brâhman.—Penitent birds.—Consolatory birds.—Presages of birds in India.—Verethraghna as a bird.—The bird's feather.—The red bird.—Grateful and prophetic birds.—The hero that understands the language of birds.—The bird and the two cypresses.—The hero becomes a bird by acquiring Solomon's ring.—The blue bird.—The bird caught by putting salt upon its tail.—The excrement of birds is propitious.—The demoniacal bird.—The bird that feeds the heroes.—Birds and poets; singers and prophets.—Auguries and auspices.—The auguries were laughed at in Greece.—Flight to right and to left.
The sky, especially by night, is conceived now as a road on which one can walk, and where sometimes the traveller may be lost, or make others lose their way; now as the air itself, in which one flies or is carried in flight, with the risk sometimes of falling; now as a tree, in which one speaks or builds nests, with the risk of the words being sometimes sinister, or the nests falling; and now as a sea in which one navigates in peril of shipwreck.
The sky-atmosphere and the sky-tree are the world of the mythical flying birds and insects. The god, the demon, the hero, and the monster, when traversing this field, either take the forms of winged animals, or make use of them to ascend to the celestial paths, or else are conducted by them to their ruin.