The supposed latitude of the observer in [Plate IX.] is 40° N., a latitude considerably to the north of any part of India; but it is to be remembered that the Indra-Vritra myth cannot be claimed with any certainty as a purely and originally Indian myth, for, as Macdonell points out (as quoted above), there is a probability that “the Indo-Iranian period possessed a god approaching to the Vedic form of the Vrtra-slaying Indra,” and that “it is even possible that beside the thundering god of heaven, the Indo-European period may have known as a distinct conception a thunder-god, gigantic in size, a mighty eater and drinker, who slays the dragon with his lightning bolt.”[59]
For the origin of this world-wide myth, therefore, we should not look to the tropical Indian Zone; but it is in Indian latitudes that we should look for an explanation of the physical phenomena hymned by Vedic bards in the distinctly Indian development of the Indra-Vritra myth. I believe that in thus tracing the course of the Indra story from temperate to tropical latitudes, we shall find a reason for the contradictory attributes assigned to the demon Vritra, namely those of darkness and drought.
In northern latitudes winter is distinctly the dark season; in tropical India there is little or no perceptible difference between the darkness of winter and summer. But in India winter is distinctly the dry season. Midsummer is the all-important season of the rains. Indra’s conquest over Vritra, or the arrival of solstitial rains, marked by the disappearance of the constellation Hydra from the sky, was mythologically in the Vedas described as Indra’s conquest over the demon of drought, but still traditionally—for the power of tradition is great—even in India Indra retained the attributes of the conqueror over the demon of darkness.
PLATE X.
Portion of Sun at Summer Solstice, 3,000 B.C. Observer in Lat. 23° N.
Constellations between the lines H H Z and Z H H invisible all through the night of Summer Solstice.
[To face p. 121.
At [Plate X.] a drawing is given of the southern heavens and of the constellations—invisible at midsummer and visible at midwinter, above the horizon of an observer in latitude 23° N. at the date 3000 B.C., a thousand years later than the date referred to in [Plate IX.] For reasons which will appear more clearly when we come to the discussion of the Soma myth, it is to about this date that I would attribute the composition of many of the Vedic hymns.