Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/82

 The Religion of the Veda trivial real properties of the sacrifice to the luminous gods whom they praise so well. 66 The most beautiful hymns of the Rig-Veda are addressed to Ushas or Aurora, the maiden Dawn, the Goddess Dawn, the daughter of Dyaush Pitar - (Zevs marip), Father Heaven--Homer's Rose-finger Eos. A poet sings her ecstatically: "We have crossed to the other side of darkness, Gleaming Aurora hath prepared the way. Delightful as the rhythm of poem,' she smiles and shines, To happiness her beauteous face aroused us." (Rig-Veda 1. 92. 6.) We feel that we are going to be held willing cap- tives of a primitive Shelley or Keats, until we are sobered by another stanza of the same hymn (stanza 5): "Her bright sheen hath snown itself to us; She spreads, and strikes the black dire gloom. As one paints the sacrificial post at the sacrifice, So hath Heaven's daughter put on her brilliance." What a comparison! The petty sacrificial post (svaru), destined to hold fast an animal victim, gaudily ornamented with paint-it is described tech- nically as having a knob for a head, along with sundry other barbaric beauties-brings us down with a thud from heaven to the mockeries of the 1 The expression chándo nd here and at 8. 7. 36 is to be rendered so, or simply "like a poem." There is no occasion for an adjectival stem chánda in the sense of "singer," or the like, as the lexicons and translators generally assume,