Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 6 (Indian and Iranian).djvu/139

THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 95 forming themselves into aquatic birds. Yet they have other associations also. They inhabit trees, especially the banyans and the sacred fig-tree, in which their lutes and cymbals resound; the Gandharvas live with them in these and other trees of the fig kind and are asked to bless a wedding procession as it passes them. Dance, song, play, and dicing are their sports; but they have a terrible side also, for they cause madness, so that magic is used against them.

But though the Apsarases are especially the loves of the Gandharvas, they can be won by mortal man, and among other names which are famous later are mentioned Menaka, Sakun- tala (from whom sprang the Bharata race), and Urvasi. The union of the latter with Pururavas is told in the Satapatha Brahmana (XI. v. 1). She married him solely on the condition that she should never see him naked; but the Gandharvas, envying the mortal the enjoyment of her society, devised a stratagem which made Pururavas spring from his couch beside Urvasi in such haste that he deemed it delay that he should put his mantle round him. Urvasi sees him illuminated in a flash of lightning and vanishes; but he seeks her all over the earth — a theme which is developed in detail in Kalidasa's famous drama — and finds her at last swimming in a lotus lake with other Apsarases in swan-shape. Urvasi reveals herself to him and consents to receive him for one night a year later; and when he returns at the appointed time, he learns from her how to secure from the Gandharvas the secret of ritual by which he himself becomes one of their number.

The Rbhus show no such change of nature; and though they are more clearly brought into connexion with the Rtus, or Seasons, than in the Rgveda, they are still regarded as being not really of pure divinity, but akin to mankind, and as receiving only with difficulty a share in the draughts of soma which are reserved for the gods proper. On the other hand, we have, especially in the Sutras which represent the last stage of the Vedic religion, constant references to many other minor