Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/82
trivial real properties of the sacrifice to the luminous gods whom they praise so well.
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 – (Ζεὺς πατὴρ), 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,[1] 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 captives 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 technically 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
- ↑ The expression chándo ná 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.