The Arctic Home in the Vedas c11.27

c11.27

The Taittirîya Samhitâ and the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa speak of the *Gavâm-ayanam* as being really held by the cows. Was it really a session of these animals? Or was it something else? The Aitareya Brâhmaṇa, we have seen, throws out a suggestion that ‘the cows are the Âdityas,’ that is, the month-gods, and the Cows' session is really the session of the monthly sun-gods.¹ Comparative mythology now fully bears out the truth of this remarkable suggestion put forward by the Brâhmaṇa. Cows, such as we meet them in the mythological legends, represent days and nights of the year, not only in the Vedic but also in the Greek mythology; and we can, therefore, now give a better account of the origin of this sacrificial session than that it was a session of bovine animals for the purpose of obtaining horns. Speaking of cows in the Aryan mythology, Prof. Max Muller in his *Contributions to the Science of Mythology* (Vol. II. p. 761) writes as follows:—