The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c9.42

c9.42

Putting all these passages together, we find that in the Rigveda, dogs are described as dark and brown, bright and red, possessing four eyes, guarding the house and the way to Yama's region, vomiting and making milk, and above all beginning the new year.* All these facts clearly show that the Vedic dogs are the same as the Hellenic or the Iranian, and we can easily and satisfactorily account for all these legends by supposing that the vernal equinox was near the Dog-star in those days, thus making the dog rise with the sun in the beginning of the year at the gates of the Devayâna. We can now also understand how the dogs could have been described as four-eyed. For, if they are correctly identified with Canis near the Milky Way, then the four stars in the body of Canis might naturally be said to be his eyes;* for once the number of eyes is increased from two to four, we need not expect to find them all on the head, but, like the thousand eyes of Indra in the later mythology, they may be regarded as spread over the whole body. M. Darmesteter rightly observes† that "the Parsis being at a loss to find four-eyed dogs interpreted the name as meaning a dog with two spots above the eyes; but it is clear that the two-spotted dog's services‡ are only accepted for want of a four-eyed one, or of a white one with yellow ears." Evidently the Parsi priests failed to realise that it was the divine or heavenly, and not an earthly dog that was here described, as driving the death-fiend. The Atharva Veda vi. 80. 3 shows that the Indian priests of the time well understood it to mean a dog who is "born of waters, whose house is in the sky, and who sheds his lustre all around."