The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.87

c9.87

After such and other premonitory symptoms of scepticism and unrest, Professor Hillebrandt has recently advanced a new theory of Indra, Vritra, and the waters, which he expounds with great ingenuity and learning.¹ He argues that the streams of India and the neighboring Iranian countries are at their lowest level in the winter; that the confiner of their waters is the frozen winter, conceived as a winter monster by the name of Vritra, "confiner;" that Vritra holds captive the rivers on the heights of the glacier mountains; and that, consequently, Indra can be no other than the spring or summer sun who frees them from the clutches of the winter dragon: "Behold, in winter's chain sleeps the song of the waterfall under the dungeon roof of crystal ice!" So sings a Swedish poet, Count Snoilsky. And another Swedish poet, Andreas Aabel, rings out the antistrophe: "Hear the mountains proud cascade! Just now it has broken winter's check and prison, and now it courses free along its road!"²