The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c9.31

c9.31

that the dogs represent the sun and the moon. His explanation does not, however, show how and why the dogs came to be located at the gates of heaven and why they should be entrusted amongst all the sections of the Aryan race with the duty of watching the souls of the dead. Bloomfield quotes Kath. S. xxxvii. 14 (where day and night are called the dogs of Yama) and Shat. Br. xi. 1. 5. 1. (where the moon is said to be a divine dog) to prove that the dogs must be understood to mean the sun and the moon. But I think that the Brâhmaṇa here gives simply a conjectural explanation, and, as in the case of Namuchi's legend, we cannot accept it, inasmuch as it does not give any reason why the dogs were stationed at the doors of Yama's region. There are many other incidents in the story which are not explained on Bloomfield's theory. I see, therefore, no reason for modifying my views which were put down in writing before I could get Bloomfield's paper in the last number of the Journal of the American Oriental Society.