The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s2.50

v1.c19.s2.50

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.