The punctuality of the rains in many parts of India is so exact that the farmer foretells their arrival not only to the day, but to the hour. In good years heavy and almost incessant rain lasts for two or even three months. Indra, as a personification of the season which so punctually brings the rain, is an atmospheric god, the enemy of the demon of drought. But Indra is more than this: many praises are bestowed on Indra in the Rig Veda for deeds which cannot easily be explained on the simple atmospheric theory. “Indra is the highest of all” is the refrain of many Vedic verses; “Indra placed the sun high in the sky,” “Indra tore off one wheel of the sun’s chariot,” “Indra stopped the tawny coursers of the sun.” Now all these phrases are at once and clearly to be interpreted if we think of Indra as the personification of the summer solstice, and especially of the solstice in India, where at that season of the year the sun attains to the very zenith, and thus Indra associated with the sun under one figure of speech is spoken of as “highest of all,” and in a slightly varied figure associated with the season, is said to have “placed the sun high in the sky.” Or again translating into myth the very meaning of the word solstice or “the sun being made to stand,” we read that Indra “tore off the wheel of the chariot of the sun,” and “stopped his tawny coursers.” Indra is, I cannot but believe, not merely an atmospheric god; he is the god of the summer solstice. And if this should be the case, what then may Vritra be? Is the demon of the solstitial Indra personified as only a snake-like cloud? It is impossible to think so. The astronomic interpretation of the myth I would propose is that—a snake-like constellation, not a snake-like cloud, is the representation of the demon Vritra.
On the celestial sphere many serpents and dragons are represented, but the far-reaching constellation Hydra exceeds all the others in its enormous length from head to tail. No very brilliant stars mark the asterism, nor in the grouping of its stars is there anything especially snake-like. For some reason other than its appeal to the eye did astronomers of old invest with all the horrors of the Hydra-form the monotonous length of this space on the vault of the skies.
This reason may be arrived at, with almost certainty, in studying, with the help of a precessional globe, the position in the heavens of this constellation in different ages of the world’s history. So studying, we shall find that 4,000 B.C.—or to be more precise, one or two hundred years earlier—Hydra extended its enormous length for more than 90° symmetrically along one astronomically important (though invisible) mathematical line—the line of the heavenly equator—and was at the same date accurately bisected by another equally important mathematical line, namely the colure of the summer solstice (see [Plate IX.]).
Almost irresistibly, as it appears to me, the conviction forces itself on the mind, in considering the position held by the constellation Hydra 4,000 B.C., that it was at that date that this baleful figure was first traced in imagination on the sky, there fitly to represent the power of physical (and may we not suppose also, of moral?) darkness—a great and terrible power—but a power ever and ever again to be conquered by the victorious power of light. In astronomic myth this power was represented as that of the sun at the season of its highest culmination, the season of the summer solstice. For an observer in the temperate northern zone all through the long nights of mid-winter, the whole length of the dreadful Hydra was at the date named visible above the horizon. The dark midwinter season was therefore the time of the Hydra’s greatest glory. At every season of the year, except at that of midsummer, some portion of the monster’s form was visible during some part of the night. But at the summer solstice no star in the constellation might show itself for ever so short a time.[58]
[58] [Plate IX.] represents the constellations above the horizon, but invisible at noon at the midsummer solstice. It therefore represents those above the horizon, and visible at midwinter midnight.
PLATE IX.
Position of the Sun amongst the Constellations at Summer Solstice, 4,000 B.C. Observer in Lat. 40° N.
Constellations between the lines H Z and Z H invisible all through the night of Summer Solstice.
[To face p. 118.