Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 6 (Indian and Iranian).djvu/97

Rh of the sacrificial post, which is invoked as Vanaspati or Svaru and which is a god who, thrice anointed with ghee, is asked to let the offerings go to the gods. The sacrificial grass (the barhis) and the doors leading to the place of the sacrifice are likewise divine, while the pressing stones are invoked to drive demons away and to bestow wealth and offspring. Thus also the plough and the ploughshare (Śunāsīra) as well as the weapons of war, the arrow, bow, quiver, and armour, nay, even the drum, are hailed as divine. Doubtless in this we are to see fetishism rather than full divinity: the thing adored attains for the time being and in its special use a holiness which is not perpetually and normally its own. Such also must have been the character of the image or other representation of Indra which one poet offers to sell for ten cows, on condition that it shall be returned to him when he has slain his foes.

The religion of the Ṛgveda is predominantly anthropomorphic in its representations of the gods, and theriomorphism plays a comparatively limited part. Yet there is an exception in the case of the sun, who appears repeatedly in the form of a horse. Thus the famous steed Dadhikrā or Dadhikrāvan, who speeds like the winds along the bending ways, is not only conceived as winged, but is likened to a swooping eagle and is actually called an eagle. He pervades the five tribes with his power as the sun fills the waters with his light; his adversaries fear him like the thunder from heaven when he fights against a thousand; and he is the swan dwelling in the light. He is invoked with Agni and with Uṣas, and his name may mean "scattering curdled milk," in allusion to the dew which appears at sunrise. No glorification of a famous racehorse could account for these epithets. Tārkṣya seems to be another form of the sun-horse, for the language used of him is similar to that regarding Dadhikrā. Perhaps, too, Paidva, the courser brought by the Aśvins to Pedu to replace an inferior steed, may also be a solar horse; nor is there any doubt that Etaśa is the horse of the sun, who bears along the chariot of the god.