Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 6 (Indian and Iranian).djvu/62

34 when he slew the chief of the dragons and released the waters from the mountain, he generated the sun, the sky, and the dawn; he finds the light in the darkness and makes the sun to shine. He also wins the dawns; with the sun and the dawn he discovers or delivers or wins the cows; the dawns again go forth to meet Indra when he becomes the lord of the kine. Moreover he gains the soma and he establishes the quaking mountains, a feat which the Brāhmaṇas explain as denoting that he cut off their wings. He supports the earth and props up the sky, and is the generator of heaven and earth.

Indra, however, does not war with demons only, for he attacked Uṣas, shattered her wain with his bolt, and rent her slow steeds, whereupon she fled in terror from him, this being, perhaps, a myth of the dawn obscured by a thunder-storm or of the sunrise hastening the departure of the lingering dawn. Indra also came into conflict with the sun when he was running a race with the swift steed Etaśa, and in some unexplained way Indra caused the car of the sun to lose a wheel. He also seems to have murdered his father Tvaṣṭṛ, and, though the Maruts aid him in his struggle with Vṛtra, in a series of hymns we find a distinct trace that he quarrelled with them, used threatening language to them, and was appeased only with difficulty.

Other foes of Indra's were the Paṇis, who kept cows hidden in a cave beyond the Rasā, a mythical stream. Saramā, Indra's messenger, tracks the kine and demands them in Indra's name, only to be mocked by the Paṇis, but Indra shatters the ridge of Vala and overcomes his antagonists. Elsewhere the cows are said to be confined by the power of Vala without reference to the Paṇis and are won by Indra, often with the help of the Aṅgirases. Vala ("Encircler") is clearly the name of the stronghold in which the cows are confined.

As becomes so great a warrior, Indra is a worthy helper to men on earth. He is the chief aid of the Aryans in their struggles against the Dāsas or Dasyus, and subjects the black