Vedic Mythology c5.s2.19

c5.s2.19

It is however rather as mountains (*parvata*, *giri*: p. 10) that they appear in the Indra myth. They are the mountains (1, 32¹) on which the demons dwell (1, 32²; 2, 12¹¹), or from which he casts them down (1, 130⁷; 4, 30¹⁴; 6, 26⁵). Indra shoots forth his well-aimed arrow from these mountains (8, 66⁶). He cleft wide the mountain to release the cows (8, 45³⁰). Or the cloud is a rock (*adri*) which encompasses the cows and which Indra moves from its place (6, 17⁵). He loosened the rock and made the cows easy to obtain (10, 112⁸). He released the cows which were fast within the stone (6, 43³ cp. 5, 30⁴). The cloud rocks or mountains would seem to represent the stationary rainless clouds seen during drought, while the cloud cows would rather be the moving and roaring rain-cloud (p. 10). Oldenberg (ORV. 140 f.) thinks that to the poets of the RV. the mountains as well as the rivers in the Vṛtra-myth are terrestrial, though he admits that they were originally aerial and at a later period also were understood as such.