ORIENTAL SERIES.

342
VASISHTHAVASU-DEVA.
birds they fouglit so furiously that the course of the universe
was disturbed, and many creatures perished. Brahma at
length
put an end to the conflict by restoring them to their natural
forms and compelling them to be reconciled.
According to the Yishwu Purawa, Yasish&a had for wife
Urja, one of the daughters of Daksha, and by her he had seven
sons. The Bhagavata Purawa gives him Arundhati for wife.
"
The Vishnu Purarca also makes him the family priest of the
"
and he was not only contemporary with
house of Ikshwaku ;
Ikshwaku himself, but with his descendants down to the sixty-
first generation. "YasisMia, according to all accounts (says
Dr. Muir), must have been of
possessed
a
vitality altogether
superhuman," for it appears that the name Yasishftia is " used
not to denote merely a person belonging to a family so called,
but to represent the founder of the family himself as taking
part in the transactions of many successive ages."
"It is clear that Vasishflia, although he is
frequently designated
in
post-vedic writings
as a Brahman, was, according to some
authorities, not really such in any proper sense of the word, as
in the accounts which are given of his birth he is declared to
have been either a mind-born son of Brahma, or the son of
Mitra and Varurca and the Apsaras TJrvasi, or to have had some
other supernatural origin" (Muir, i, 337). Vasish/ha's descen-
dants are called Vasishihas and Yashkalas.
YASTOSH-PATI, <
House protector.'
One of the later gods
of the Yeda, represented as springing from Brahma's dalliance
with his daughter. He was the protector of sacred rites and
guardian of houses.
YASU. The Yasus are a class of deities, eight in number,
chiefly known as attendants upon India. They seam to have
been in Yedic times personifications of natural phenomena,
They are Apa (water), Dhruva (pole-star), Soma (moon), Dhara
(earth), Anila (wind), Anala (fire), Prablifisa (dawn), and Pratyusha
(light). According to the Kamayana they were children
of Aditi.
YASU-DEYA, Son of Sura, of the Yfulava branch of the
Lunar race. He was father of Kn'shwa, and Kunti, tho mother
of the PMava princes, was his sister. He married seven
daughters of Ahuka, and the youngest of them, Devaki, was the
mother of Krishna. After the death of Kn'shna and Bala-