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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s2: § 2. The Gandharvas and the Apsarases

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s2

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§ 2. The Gandharvas and the Apsarases

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In the Rigveda the word Gandharva occurs twenty times, but only thrice in the plural, from which it is fair to deduce that the nature of the spirit was originally conceived as one. What is still more important is that it occurs but once in book ii–vii, and is found twice in the eighth book as a being hostile to Indra. The epithet *viçvāvasu*, ‘possessing all good things’, which accompanies it, appears once in the Rigveda¹ itself, and often later, to denote a definite individual. The Gandharva of that text is a high being of the air of the sky, a measurer of space who stands erect on the vault of heaven. He is brought into relation with the sun, the sun-bird, the sun-steed, and Soma likened to the sun. He is also connected with the rainbow in a late hymn.² He is, however, especially connected with Soma, whose place he guards, standing on the vault of heaven. Kṛçānu, the archer, who shoots at the eagle which steals the Soma, is expressly said in a later text³ to be a Gandharva. But the Gandharva is also connected with the waters: Soma in the waters is said to be the Gandharva of the waters: the parents of Yama and Yamī are the Gandharva and the maiden of the waters: the Gandharva is the lover of the Apsaras. The Gandharva is further found in the marriage ceremony: the bride is claimed by him, and he is in the beginning of the marriage a rival of the husband.⁴ Further the Gandharva has a fragrant garment,⁵ and is wind-haired.⁶

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¹ x. 85. 21, 22.

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² RV. x. 123, a hymn however very differently interpreted; Oldenberg, *Ṛgveda-Noten*, ii. 342.

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³ TA. i. 9. 3; RV. iv. 27. 3.

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⁴ RV. x. 85. 22.

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⁵ RV. x. 123. 7; cf. AV. xii. 1. 23.

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⁶ RV. iii. 38. 6.

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In the later Saṁhitās the account of the Gandharvas is fuller, but not essentially different: there is now a class which can be mentioned beside the gods, Fathers, and Asuras; they have a definite world of their own like the gods or the Fathers, to which a man may attain;⁷ the number is sometimes twenty-seven, which is the number of the Nakṣatras, or even 6333.⁸ Celestial traits are still numerous:⁹ his abode is in heaven, Rohiṇī and the stars of the moon's orbit are brought into connexion with the Gandharva; he is mentioned with such deities as Agni, sun, moon, and wind, and in the post-Vedic literature the Fata Morgana are connected with the Gandharva.¹⁰ But the Soma myth is especially developed. We learn that the Gandharvas kept Soma for the gods, but, allowing it to be stolen, were punished by exclusion from drinking it.¹¹ Viçvāvasu has to be eluded by Soma in eagle form, a fact which no doubt explains the hostility of Indra to the Gandharva in the eighth book of the Rigveda.¹ Soma is stated to have been stolen by Viçvāvasu or at least to have lived among the Gandharvas, but the gods by the bribe of Vāc, ‘speech’, were able to induce them to give him up,² the Gandharvas being fond of women, while Vāc agreed to come back when her former owners called her, a fact which is an interesting parallel to the legend which makes the Soma seller lose the price paid to him for the Soma. The connexion with the waters appears in the mention of his abode with the Apsarases in the waters in the Atharvaveda.³ That text also states that the Gandharva knows plants, doubtless the Soma, and that the odour of the earth arises to him, probably an idea due to folk etymology with *gandha*, odour.

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⁷ JB. i. 166; cf. 259 (yonder world, Gandharva-, Deva-, Svarga-loka); ÇB. xi. 5. 1. 17. Hence perhaps the Kali Gandharvas in JB. i. 154 f.

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⁸ AV. xi. 5. 2.

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⁹ BAU. iii. 6 places the Gandharva world between the atmosphere and the sun, but cf. ÇB. xiv. 6. 6. 1. See also AV. ii. 2. 1, 2; xiv. 2. 36; VS. ix. 7; xviii. 38 ff.

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¹⁰ *Epic Myth.*, p. 157. The alleged Iranian parallel is dubious; E. H. Meyer, *Indog. Myth.* i. 99 f.

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¹¹ MS. iii. 8. 10.

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¹ viii. 77. 5; l. 11. Carnoy (JAOS. xxxvi. 312) suggests contamination of an Indo-European storm myth and a Semitic monster of the abyss.

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² TS. vi. 1. 6. 5; MS. iii. 7. 3; AB. i. 27; ÇB. iii. 2. 4. 3–6.

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³ ii. 2. 3; iv. 37. 12.

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In the Brāhmaṇa texts and in the ritual the connexion between the Apsarases and the Gandharvas is especially close: the Gandharva Ūrṇāyu sits among the Apsarases, who swing themselves, and is beloved by them:⁴ in a rite the priest can point to the young men and the young maidens present, when he means to indicate the Gandharvas and Apsarases.⁵ They are besought to bestow progeny,⁶ and in the Buddhist texts the being, which by the law of transmigration enters the womb at the time of conception, is called a Gandhabba.⁷ For the nights immediately after the marriage, when the newly wedded couple are not allowed to consummate the marriage, a staff which represents the Gandharva Viçvāvasu is placed between them, and not until it is formally dismissed to the highest region is the marriage completed.⁸ A different and lower view of the Gandharvas is also found in the Atharvaveda⁹ where the plant goat’s horn is used to drive off the Gandharvas, who are regarded as shaggy with half animal forms, and are said to seek to ruin women in the guise of an ape, a dog, a hairy child, or a friend.

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⁴ PB. xii. 11. 10.

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⁵ ÇB. xiii. 4. 3. 7, 8.

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⁶ PB. xix. 3. 2; cf. ÇGS. i. 19, 2.

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⁷ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 253, n. 1; contra, Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 427; *Zur Bedeutung von Gandharva* (1906); cf. Garbe, *Sâṃkhya-Philosophie*², p. 306.

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⁸ RV. x. 85. 22.

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⁹ AV. iv. 37; cf. viii. 6. 19. Their assimilation to Piçācas is seen in iv. 37. 8–10, and we find in Saṁyutta Nikāya, i. 33, Piçācas beside Apsarases as infesting a wood.

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In the Avesta there is a being, a Gandarewa, who dwells in the sea Vourukaša and is defeated by the heroic Keresāspa. He is also a lord of the bays, who dwells in the waters, and his identity with the Gandharva is clearly undeniable. The further comparison of Kentauros¹⁰ is certainly untenable phonetically, unless it be assumed that both are loan words, and is open to the gravest objections on the grounds of the nature of the two conceptions: the few points of similarity cannot be traced in the Rigvedic conception at all.

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¹⁰ Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 343, n. 1.

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The nature of the Gandharva cannot well be expressly defined: there can be no doubt whatever that he is in his origin a creature of the heaven: the light side of his nature is obvious and persistent despite other traits. The connexion with water can be traced to various sources: either the waters of the sky are the basis on which his activity has been transferred to the waters of earth, or his association with the Apsarases has led to his connexion with the waters, or as is quite possible the obscuration of his original nature has rendered it possible to associate him with elements not originally his own. It is more difficult to see how the demons of the Atharvaveda who are no better than Piçācas—indeed in a Buddhist text¹ Piçācas replace Gandharvas in conjunction with the Apsarases—can be developed from the Gandharva of the Rigveda. It is most probable that this is simply a case where demons have been allowed to obtain a name which is not theirs by right, the point of contact being found in the connexion of the Gandharva with marriage, which leads to the doubtless secondary connexion of the Gandharva with the embryo. The Gandharva, therefore, is not in the secondary period of the Vedic religion any longer a single concept: he is compounded of different and in essence disparate ideas.

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¹ *Saṁyutta Nikāya*, i. 33.

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What the original nature of the Rigvedic Gandharva was, cannot, as has been said, be precisely elucidated: to Kuhn² he is a cloud spirit, to Wallis³ the rising sun, to Bergaigne⁴ Soma, to Hopkins⁵ a genius of the moon, and to Roth⁶ the rainbow. To a different idea belongs the view taken by Mannhardt,⁷ E. H. Meyer,⁸ and von Schroeder,⁹ which sees in him a wind spirit developed out of the conception of the spirits of the dead as riding in the wind and passing therefore into wind spirits. Hillebrandt¹⁰ thinks that the real meaning of the name Gandharva is giant, and that the name is applied to different potencies, now and then to wind spirits, in other cases to the sun, since he finds that it is mentioned of Viçvāvasu that he kept Soma hidden for three nights: as Soma is the moon in the view of Hillebrandt, this can refer only to the obscuration of the moon for three nights by the sun, and therefore of course the Gandharva must be the sun. This form of argument is by no means convincing, and, as against the theory of wind gods, it must be pointed out that only once in the Rigveda is there any possible mention of wind in connexion with the Gandharva, and from such an incidental idea no conclusion can ever be drawn to the nature of a Vedic deity.

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² *Herabkunft des Feuers*, p. 153.

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³ *Cosmology*, pp. 34, 36.

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⁴ *Rel. Véd.* iii. 64-7.

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⁵ *Rel. of India*, p. 157.

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⁶ *Nirukta*, p. 142, and cf. *St. Petersburg Dict.*, s. v.

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⁷ *Wald- und Feldkulte*, i. 201.

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⁸ *Indog. Myth.* i. 219 ff.

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⁹ *Griech. Götter*, i. 71. Cf. *Mysterium und Mimus*, pp. 57 ff.; Arbman (*Rudra*, p. 309) argues that the Rigvedic conception is a priestly refinement, ignoring the much more plausible view of 'contamination' of deities.

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¹⁰ *Ved. Myth.* i. 426-49; (Kl. Ausg.), pp. 72 101.

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Of the Apsaras in the Rigveda is mentioned her connexion with the Gandharva upon whom she smiles in the highest heaven. Vasiṣṭha also claims birth from an Apsaras, and the Vasiṣṭhas are said to have sat close to the Apsarases.¹¹ The long-haired Muni, or ascetic with magic powers, moves on the path of the Gandharvas and the Apsarases.¹ The water nymph who is the spouse of the Gandharva is clearly the Apsaras. The connexion with water is brought out still more clearly in its most primitive form when the Apsarases of the sea are described as flowing to the Soma, a mythic description of the mixing of water with the Soma. The description of the Apsarases, therefore, agrees entirely and completely with the meaning of their name : ² they are ‘ the goers in the water ’, water nymphs, and already in the Rigveda they are not confined to the waters of the earth, though they were perhaps there first located.

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¹¹ RV. vii. 33. 9.

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¹ RV. x. 136. 6.

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² Not as Wackernagel (*Festschrift Kuhn*, pp. 159 f.), ‘ shameless ’, or ‘ formless ’ ; see Oldenberg, GGA. 1915, p. 131.

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In the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda the connexion of the Apsarases with the waters is frequently expressed : they abide in the waters, they are often asked to depart from men to the river and the bank of the waters, possibly a hint at the dangerous quality of the nymphs.³ The Apsarases who accompany the Gandharva Viçvāvasu are connected with clouds, lightning, and stars, and all the later Saṁhitās agree in calling them the wives of the Gandharvas. In the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa ⁴ they appear as swimming about in a lake in the form of birds (*ātī*), and the later literature often treats them as water spirits, in forest lakes, in rivers, even in Varuṇa’s palace in the ocean. But they have also a further field of activity ; they dwell in the banyan and the fig-tree, according to the Atharvaveda,⁵ where their cymbals and their lutes resound. The Gandharvas and Apsarases in these trees are begged to be propitious to a passing wedding party.⁶ They are also said to be engaged in dance and song and play, but the Atharvaveda ⁷ mentions some sinister characteristics : if they are fond of dice, and bestow good luck in gambling, they are also liable to cause madness, and magic has to be employed against them in this regard. The post-Vedic literature also finds them with the Gandharvas in trees, and adds mountains ⁸ to their places of habitation. It is perhaps from them that the Gandharva attains his power of causing derangement or at least mental excitement, which is attested for the Brāhmaṇa period by the phrase ‘ seized by a Gandharva ’, used of a lady who is inspired or demented.⁹

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³ Cf. Mannhardt, *Wald- und Feldkulte*, ii. 36 ff.

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⁴ xi. 5. 1. 4.

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⁵ iv. 37. 4 ; Mannhardt, *Wald- und Feldkulte*, i. 99 f.

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⁶ AV. xiv. 2. 9 ; Kauç. lxxvii. 7 ; TS. iii. 4. 8. 4.

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⁷ ii. 2. 3 ; 3. 3.

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⁸ Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxiii. 640 f. ; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 156, 160.

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⁹ A Gandharva, in conjunction with an Apsaras (appearing identical with a mortal woman), brings about the madness and death of the Brahman Yavakrī ; see JB. ii. 269–72.

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One Apsaras only is named in the Rigveda, the famous Urvaçī. She was the mother of Vasiṣṭha,¹⁰ who claimed also descent from Mitra and Varuṇa, and she is invoked with the streams. But the chief reference to her is in a hymn¹ of considerable interest and obscurity, in which she is loved by Purūravas. She is there connected with water, filling the atmosphere and traversing space. It is said that she spends four autumns among mortals, and she is invoked to return, but that request she refuses, promising, however, Purūravas that his offspring will worship the gods, and he himself will enjoy happiness in heaven. The hymn clearly refers to one of those alliances of nymphs and men, which are common in all literatures as in the stories of Thetis and of the German swan maidens, who often for as long as seven years are allowed to stay with mortal men. In the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa² several interesting details are given, which, however, cannot be read into the Rigvedic account, and, therefore, may rest on later alteration and embellishment of the narative. Purūravas is united to Urvaçī, but only on condition that she shall never see him naked: the Gandharvas envying their union, which subtracts her from their midst, devise a plan by which the sheep which Urvaçī keeps with her is stolen away: Purūravas leaps from his couch to prevent the theft: he forgets to put on his garment, 'for he thought it long that he should do so,' and he is revealed in a flash of light to the nymph who departs forthwith. Purūravas seeks desperately for her over the earth, until he comes upon her swimming in a lotus lake along with other Apsarases in the shape of aquatic birds. Urvaçī reveals herself to him and consents to receive him on a night a year later, when the Gandharvas enable him to become one of themselves by producing the sacrificial fire in a certain way. The tale has, of course, in any case been remodelled to suit the purpose of advocating the special mode proposed of producing the fire, but the episode of the taboo of seeing the hero naked is of interest and primitive in nature. It may be, as von Schroeder³ suggests, an inversion of the same rule applied to the maiden, since the German legends of swan maidens lay always stress on the absolute necessity of the maiden not being seen in her true nature, but the transfer need not be certainly assumed. Purūravas is only once elsewhere mentioned in the Rigveda,⁴ where it is said that Agni caused the sky to thunder for the righteous Purūravas, though, as the name means 'he who calls aloud', it is possible that in that passage the word is merely an epithet. In any case the view of Weber⁵ and Max Müller⁶ that Purūravas is the sun and Urvaçī the dawn is quite unnecessary, while Siecke's⁷ attempt to show that Urvaçī is the moon is based on the same curious reasoning as all his efforts to fill the Rigveda with moon deities. Purūravas is simply a hero, not necessarily ever a real man, but conceived as one: later tradition derives the lunar race of kings from him.

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¹⁰ RV. vii. 33. 11, 12. Possibly an idea due to mystic visions at the Dīkṣā ; cf. Hauer, *Die Anfänge der Yogapraxis im alten Indien*, pp. 72 f.

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¹ RV. x. 95. 10, 17.

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² xi. 5. 1; Geldner, *Ved. Stud.* i. 243–95; Oldenberg's notes. For a revised version, Çāntanu and Gaṅgā, see MBh. i. 3888 ff.; cf. Mannhardt, *Wald- und Feldkulte*, i. 69, 103 f., 152.

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³ *Griech. Götter*, i. 53 ff.

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⁴ i. 31. 4.

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⁵ *Ind. Stud.* i. 196.

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⁶ *Chips*, iv.² 109.

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⁷ *Die Liebesgeschichte des Himmels.*

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Other names of Apsarases are given in the later Saṁhitās: the Atharvaveda¹ mentions Ugrajit, Ugrampaçyā, and Rāṣṭrabhṛt, and the Yajurveda² names among many others Menakā and Urvaçī. The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa³ mentions also a nymph, who is famous in later story, Çakuntalā, as the mother of the king Bharata.

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¹ vi. 118. 1, 2.

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² VS. xv. 15 ff.

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³ xiii. 5. 4. 13; cf. Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxiii. 635 ff.; Leumann, xl. 80–82; v. Bradke, *ibid.* 498 ff.

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