Vedic Mythology c5.s2.24

c5.s2.24

Indra produces the dawn as well as the sun (2, 12⁷. 21⁴; 3, 31¹⁵; 32⁸. 49⁴). He has made the dawns and the sun to shine (3, 44²). He has opened the darkness with the dawn and the sun (1, 62⁵). He steals the dawn with the sun (2, 20⁵). The cows which are mentioned along with sun and dawn (1, 62⁵; 2, 12⁷; 6, 17⁵) or with the sun alone (1, 7³; 2, 19³; 3, 34⁹; 6, 17³. 32²; 10, 138²) as found, delivered, or won by Indra, probably do not so much represent the waters²⁵ or rainclouds, as the morning beams (§ 61) or, according to BERGAIGNE (BRV. 1, 245) and others, the red clouds of dawn. The waters are probably meant by the ruddy watery (*apyā*) cows (9, 108⁶), but the morning beams or clouds in the following passages. The dawns on seeing Indra went to meet him, when he became the lord of the cows (3, 31⁴). When he overcame Vṛtra he made visible the cows (*dhenāḥ*) of the nights (3, 34³ cp. BRV. 2, 200). Dawn is in some passages spoken of in expressions reminding of the winning of the cows. Thus ‘Dawn opens the darkness as cows their stall’ (1, 92⁴). Dawn opens the doors of the firm rock (7, 79⁴). The cows low towards the dawns (7, 75⁷). The Aṅgirases burst open the cowstalls of Uṣas on the heights (6, 65⁵). The dawn is sometimes said to have been produced along with the sun in the same passages in which the conquest of the waters is celebrated (1, 32¹· ². ⁴; 6, 30⁵; 10, 138¹· ²). Thus there appears to be a confusion between the notion of the restoration of the sun after the darkness of the thunderstorm and the recovery of the sun from the darkness of night at dawn. The latter trait is in the Indra myth most probably only an extension of the former.