The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c9.55

c9.55

We can now explain how later writers evolved a myth out of Namuchi's death. The story is given in the Tâṇḍya Brâhmaṇa (xii. 6. 8).* There we are told that Indra and Namuchi came to a settlement that the former should kill the latter, neither during day nor by night, nor by any weapon, whether dry or wet. Indra therefore killed him with the foam of the waters at the junction of day and night, when it had dawned, but yet the sun had not risen. It is probably this circumstance that has led Professor Max Müller to suppose that Orthros represents the gloom of the morning. But the explanation does not account for the other incidents in the story. Was Namuchi or Vṛitra killed every morning by Indra? Or was it only at the beginning of the rainy season? Evidently the latter. We must then suppose that Namuchi was killed after dawn, but before the actual daybreak, at or during the monsoons. In other words, the junction of day and night in the later myths must be understood to mean a particular junction of day and night in the rains, or more definitely, the junction of the day and the night of the Gods—the junction of the Pitṛiyâna and the Devayâna, the gates of which are said to be cleared up by Namuchi's death in the passage from the Rigveda given above. The latter part of the legend is, however, still more poetical, and Prof. Max Müller's theory leaves it entirely unexplained. Indra is here said to have killed Namuchi with a weapon which was neither dry nor moist—the watery froth. This is evidently based upon Rig. viii. 14. 13, where Indra is described as "cutting the head of Namuchi with the foam of waters," and the same incident is again referred to in Rig. x. 61. 8. Therefore, even if we reject later speculations with respect to "why foam or froth should have been used," and decline to solve the question by assuming a compact* between Indra and Namuchi, yet we have to account for the fact that in the Rigveda itself Indra is said to have used the foamy weapon to destroy his enemy. What could this foamy weapon be? If Namuchi was killed at the gates of the Devayāna and his head still lies there, the watery foam could be no other than the broad belt of the Milky Way which crossed the heavens at the same part. The blue vault of the heavens is often compared to an ocean in the later Sanskrit literature,* and the stars are said to be the patches of foam upon its surface. Thus in the Mahimna Stotra, which is considered to be at least seven or eight hundred years old, the author describes (verse 17) the heavenly form of Rudra (i. e., Rudra as represented in the sky), and tells us that the stream of waters on his head has "the beauty of its foamy appearance enhanced by a number of stars.'† This is a description of the Ganges on the head of the celestial form of Shiva, and the author of Mahimna, who, in verse 22, refers to the story of Rudra piercing Prajāpati with an arrow, and says that the whole story is still illustrated in the sky,‡ evidently meant to