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N one of the oldest of the Vedas—those books which contain the legends of the Aryans before they split up into fragmentary races—we find a similar story about Urvasi and Pururavas.

These two stories are usually explained as myths which show how the dawn vanishes as soon as it looks upon the sun. In solar myths, the dawn is often typified as a maiden, the sun-god being her lover who pursues her vanishing form through the heavens—an idea picturesquely brought out in the myth of Cinderella. If these two stories really are a bit of sun and dawn folklore then, Urvasi and Psyche must each be the dawn-maiden, and Pururavas and Cupid must be the sun-god on whose glorious form, unveiled by any clouds, the dawn-maiden dare not look, for, as she looks, the two lovers become separated—i.e., the dawn vanishes before the rising sun. But it is a little curious that in one story, the maiden disappears, while in the other it is the lover himself who flees. Obviously there is some other myth than a purely solar one involved in these two stories,—stories so strikingly similar and yet so strikingly at variance in the one feature in which they should agree, if true sun and dawn myths.