Artic Home of the Aryans by Lokamanya Bal ... - Mandhata Global

185
The Taittirîya Samhitâ and the Aitareya Brâhmana speak of the
Gavâm-ayanam as being really held by the cows. Was it really a
session of these animals? Or was it something else? The Aitareya
Brâhmana, we have seen, throws out a suggestion that “the cows are
the Âdityas,” that is the month-gods, and the Cows’ session is really
the session of the monthly sun-gods.* Comparative mythology now
fully bears out the truth of this remarkable suggestion put forward by
the Brâhmana. Cows, such as we meet them in the mythological
legends, represent days and nights of the year, not only in the Vedic
but also in the Greek mythology; any we can, therefore, now give a
better account of the origin of this sacrificial session than that it was a
session of bovine animals for the purpose of obtaining horns.
Speaking of cows in the Aryan mythology, Prof. Max Müller in his
Contributions to the Science of Mythology (Vol. II. p. 761) writes as
follows: —
“There were thus three kinds of cows, the real cows, the cows
in the dark cloud (rain = milk), and the cows stepping forth from the
dark stable of the night (the rays of the morning). These three are not
always easy to distinguish in the Veda; nay, while we naturally try to
distinguish between them, the poets themselves seem to delight in
mixing them up. In the passage quoted above (I, 32, 11), we saw how
the captive waters were compared to cows that had been stolen by
Pani (niruddhâh âpah Pânînâ iva gâvah), but what is once compared
in the Veda is soon identified. As to the Dawn, she is not only
compared to a cow, she is called the cow straight out. Thus when we
read, R.V. I. 92, 1. These dawns have made a light on the eastern
half of the sky, they brighten their splendor, the bright cows approach,
the mothers, the cows, gâvah, can only be the dawns themselves, the
plural of dawn being constantly in the Veda used where we should
use the singular. In R.V. 1, 93, 4, we read that ‘Agnîshomau deprived
Pani of his cows and found light
* See Aitareya Brâh. IV, 17, quoted supra.