Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/244

212 BOOK of Urvasi. fluence of one powerful enemy rests upon her, the influence of that witching sorceress who seeks to win for herself the love which Odysseus bears to Penelope. But the tasks imposed upon her by her unpitying rival are at last accomplished ; and as the clouds break away from the heaven, the Dawn, or the Eos, who closes the day in our Homeric poems, sees before her the form of him whom she has sought with undaunted and untiring devotion.

The story In these simple phrases relating to a drama acted before us every day, we have the framework of a vast number of stories, some of which have furnished subjects for epic poems, while others have assumed strange and grotesque forms in the homely lore of popular tradition. One of the simplest versions of the myth is found in the story of Urvasi,^ although even here the artificial influence of a growing ceremonial system is manifest. The personification of Urvasi herself is as thin as that of Eos or Selene. Her name is often found in the Veda as a mere name for the morning, and in the plural number it is used to denote the dawns which passing over men bring them to old age and death. Urvasi is the bright flush of light over- spreading the heaven before the sun rises, and is but another form of the many mythical beings of Greek mythology whose names take us back to the same idea or the same root. As the dawn in the Vedic hymns is called Uruki, the far-going (Telephassa, Telephos), so is she also Uruasi, the wide-existing or wide-spreading ; as are Europe, Euryanassa, Euryphassa, and many more of the sisters of Athene and Aphrodite. As such she is the mother of Vasishtha, the bright being, as Oidipous is the son of lokaste ; and although Vasishtha, like Oidipous, has become a mortal bard or sage, he is still the son of Mitra and Varuna, of night and day. Her lover, Pururavas, is the counterpart of the Hellenic Polydeukes ;^ but the continuance of her union with him depends on the condition that she never sees him unclothed. But the Gandharvas, impatient of her long sojourn among mortal men, resolved to bring her back to their bright home ; and Pururavas is thus led unwittingly to disregard her warning. A ewe with two lambs was tied to her couch, and the Gandharvas stole one of them. " Urvasi said, 'They take away my darling, as if I lived in a land where there is no hero and no man.' They stole the second, and she upbraided her husband again. Then Pururavas looked and

' Max Miiller, Chips, &=c., ii. 99, ct self Vasishtha, which, as we know, is seq. a name of the sun ; and if he is called

of sound, yet the root ru, which means elsewhere (A'. V. iii. 29, 3) given to originally to cry, is also ajiplied to Agni, the Fire." — Max Miiller, ib. loi. colour in the sense of a loud or crying This son of Ida reappears perhaps as colour. Besides, Pururavas calls him- Idas, the father of Kleopatra.
 * " Though rava is generally used Aii/a, the son of Ida, the same name is