Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/166

152 bird, a raven or a crow. According to the Aitareya Brahmana (ii. 59), the gods bought some from the Gandharvas in exchange for one of their own number, who was metamorphosed into a woman, "a big naked woman" of easy virtue. In the Satapatha Brahmana, the gods, while still they lived on earth, desired to obtain soma, which was then in the sky. A Gandharva robbed the divine being who had flown up and seized the soma, and, as in the Aitareya Brahmana, the gods won the plant back by the aid of Vach, a woman-envoy to the amorous Gandharvas. The Black Yajur Veda has some ridiculous legends about Soma (personified) and his thirty-three wives, their jealousies, and so forth. Soma, in the Rig-Veda, is not only the beverage that inspires Indra, but is also an anthropomorphic god who created and lighted up the sun, and who drives about in a chariot. He is sometimes addressed as a kind of Atlas, who keeps heaven and earth asunder. He is prayed to forgive the violations of his law. Soma, in short, as a personified power, wants little of the attributes of a supreme deity.

Another, and to modern ideas much more poetical personified power, often mentioned in the Vedas, is Ushas, or the dawn. As among the Australians, the dawn is a woman, but a very different being from the immodest girl dressed in red kangaroo-skins of the Murri myth. She is an active maiden, who "advances,