8. The car follows thee, O Horse: men attend thee; cattle follow thee; the loveliness of maidens (waits) upon thee; troops of demi-gods following thee have sought thy friendship; the gods themselves have been admirers of thy vigour.
9. His mane is of gold; his feet are of iron; and fleet as thought, INDRA is his inferior (in speed). The gods have come to partake of his (being offered as) oblation; the first who mounted the horse was INDRA.
10. The full-haunched, slender-waisted, high-spirited, and celestial coursers (of the sun), gallop along like swans in rows, when the horses spread along the heavenly path.
11. Thy body, horse, is made for motion; thy mind is rapid (in intention) as the wind; the hairs (of thy mane) are tossed in manifold directions; and spread beautiful in the forests.
12. The swift horse approaches the place of immolation, meditating with mind intent upon the gods; the goat bound to him is led before him; after him follow the priests and the singers.
13. The horse proceeds to that assembly which is most excellent: to the presence of his father and his mother (heaven and earth). Go, (Horse), to-day rejoicing to the gods, that (the sacrifice) may yield blessings to the donor.
Many passages in this hymn, such as those in [verse 3] referring to Trita and Soma, may suggest corroborative astronomic observations,[126] but I would here especially refer to the description, [verse 1], of the horse possessing “the wings of the falcon,” and in [verse 6] to the words, “I behold thy head soaring aloft, and mounting quickly by unobstructed paths, unsullied by dust.”
As I read these hymns I cannot think merely of an actual horse led to sacrifice, but of the winged celestial Pegasus; nor is it easy to think of that celestial horse as it is at present depicted, reversed in the sky.
The Vedic poet beheld his head soaring aloft, but in the previous verse he has said, “I have beheld Horse, ... those impressions of the feet of thee”; and if these “impressions” were the stars which, on the Grecian sphere, marked the horse’s head, but, as I have contended, originally marked his hoof, then we shall understand how, associated with Soma, and identical with Trita by a mysterious act—i.e., at the season of the summer solstice, and when the moon was at its full in the constellation Aquarius, ancient astronomers imagined to themselves the horse Pegasus producing with his hoof the sweet exhilarating waters of the fountain Hippocrene.