Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/121

 T The Prehistoric Gods 105 rational beings, and that all the rest of the peoples who worship the sun are, from their primitive point of view, also rational beings. I have devoted of recent years considerable effort to the statement and explanation of the myth of Cerberus, the dog of Hades. The Veda has two Cerberi, who are said to belong to King Yama. Yama was the first royal man who started the prac- tice of dying. He then went aloft to heaven, and found there, once for all, a choice place where the sons of man might disport themselves after death. There he rules as Yama, the King of Paradise. The Vedic texts look upon this pair of dogs in a variety of ways. First, the soul of man has to get past them in order to get to heaven. This is the familiar Cerberus idea. Secondly, the two dogs of Yama pick out daily candidates for death. Thirdly, the dogs are entrusted with the care of the souls of the dead on their way to join Yama in heaven. Now we might almost ask with the riddle: "What is it?" I wonder whether there is not present in this audience some ingenious man or woman who can guess what real pair in nature on the way to heaven, coursing like dogs across the heaven, can harmonise these discrepant points of view. But we are not left to guess. The Vedic texts tell us in plain language that they are the sun and the moon, or as they are