Page:The religions of India.djvu/54

14 the flashing of their arms and hear the sound of their flute-music and songs, with their challenge calls and the cracking of their whips.^ Tumultuous though they are, they are none the less beneficent. They are dispensers of the rains, and from the udder of Prigni, the spotted cow, their mother, they cause her milk to flow in the showers.^ From their father, Eudra, they inherit the knowledge of remedies.^ This last, whose name probably meant '' the reddish one," before it was interpreted to mean "The Howler," is, like his sons, a god of storm. In the Hymns, which certainly do not tell us everything here any more than elsewhere, he has nothing of that gloomy aspect under which we find him become so famous afterwards. Although he is armed with the thunderbolt, and is the author of sudden deaths,* he is represented as pre-emi- nently helpful and beneficent. He is the handsomest of the gods, with his fair locks. Like Soma, the most excel- lent remedies are at his disposal, and his special office is that of protector of flocks.^ He is a near relation of Vdyu or Vdta, the wind, with whom he is sometimes confounded,^ a god of healing like him, and owner of a miraculous cow which yields him the best milk.'^ He is also similarly re- lated to Parjanya, the most direct impersonation of the rain-storm, the god with the resounding hymn, who lays the forests low and causes the earth to tremble, who terrifies even the innocent when he smites the guilty, but who also diffuses life, and at whose approach exhausted vege- tation begins to revive. The earth decks herself afresh when he empties his great shower- bottle ; he is her husband, and it is through him that plants, animals, and men are capable of reproduction ; and, as may always be

1 Rig- Veda, i. 64, 4 ; viii. 20, 1 1 ; 5 Rig. Veda, ii, 33, 3, 4 ; i. 43, 4 ; i. 85, 2, 10; 37, 3, 13. 114, 5 ; ii. 33, 2 ; vi. 74; i. 43 j 2 Rig- Veda, i. 37, 10, ii ; 38, 7, 1 14, 8; x. 169. 9; 64, 6 ; V. 53, 6-10 ; ii. 34, 10. ^ Rig- Veda, x. 169. He is, like 2 Rig- Veda, i. 38,2; ii. 34, 2; him, father of the Maruts: i. 134, viii. 20, 23-26 ; ii. 33, 13. 4 ; 135, 9. •* Rig- Veda, ii. 33, 3, 10-14; vii. '' Rig- Veda, x. 186; i. 134, 4. 46. * . '