The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.10.1

c8.10.1

The Vedic texts look upon this pair of dogs in a variety of ways. First, the soul of man has to get past them in order to get to heaven. This is the familiar Cerberus idea. Secondly, the two dogs of Yama pick out daily candidates for death. Thirdly, the dogs are entrusted with the care of the souls of the dead on their way to join Yama in heaven. Now we might almost ask with the riddle: "What is it?" I wonder whether there is not present in this audience some ingenious man or woman who can guess what real pair in nature on the way to heaven, coursing like dogs across the heaven, can harmonise these discrepant points of view. But we are not left to guess. The Vedic texts tell us in plain language that they are the sun and the moon, or as they are called, with a very ancient poetic touch, the speckled and the dark. Now the word for speckled is *çabalas*; it fits in well enough with Greek Κέρβερος, considering the susceptibility of mythic proper names to the kind of modulation, or sophistication, which we call popular etymology. But we may disregard the verbal etymology altogether. Other Indo-European peoples have more or less definite notions about one or two dogs. It is more than probable that the early notions of future life turned to the visible heaven with its sun and moon, rather than the topographically unstable and elusive caves and gullies that lead, in the unquestionably late Greek fancy, to a wide-gated Hades.