CHAP. V.
we hear the people saying, "Our friend the sun is dead. Will he rise? Will the dawn come back again?" we see the death of Heraklês, and the weary waiting while Lêtô struggles with the birth of Phoibos. When on the return of day we hear the cry—
"Rise! our life, our spirit is come back, the darkness is gone, the light draws near!"
—we are carried at once to the Homeric hymn, and we hear the joyous shout of all the gods when Phoibos springs to life and light in Delos.[1] The tale of Urvasi and Pururavas[2] (these are still the morning and the sun) is the tale of Orpheus and Eurydike. Pururavas, in his dreary search, hears the voice of Urvasi saying, "I am gone like the first of the dawns; I am hard to be caught, like the wind." Yet she will come back to him at the close of the night, and a son, bright and beaming, shall be born to them. Varuna is still the wide heaven, the god "who can be seen by all," the lord of the whole earth; but in him we recognise at once the Greek Ouranos, who looks lovingly on Gaia from his throne in the sky. Yet more, we read the praises of Indra, and his great exploit is that
"He has struck the daughter of Dyaus (Zeus), a woman difficult to vanquish—
"Yes, even the daughter of Dyaus, the magnified, the Dawn, thou, O Indra, a great hero hast ground to pieces.[3]
"The Dawn rushed off from her crushed car, fearing that Indra, the bull, might strike her.
"This her car lay there, well ground to pieces: she went far away."
The treatment is rude, but we have here not merely the whole story of Daphne, but the germ of that of Europe borne by the same bull across the sea. More commonly, however, the dawn is spoken of as bright, fair, and loving, the joy of all who behold her.
"She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work.
"She rose up, spreading far and wide (Euryganeia, Eurydikê), and moving towards every one. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows (the morning clouds, the
- ↑
έκ δ’ έθορε πρό φόωσδε θεαί δ’ όλόλυξαν ἃπασαι.
Hymn to Apollo, 119. - ↑ In the essay on Comparative Mythology, Professor Max Müller has givennot only the older forms of this myth, but a minute analysis of the play of Kalidâsa on this subject. This poem is very instructive, as showing that the character of the Homeric Achilleus adheres as closely to the original idea as do those of Urvasî and Purûravas in the later poetry of Kalidâsa. For the Semitic expressions of a like feeling see Brown, Great Dionysiak Myth, i. 245.
- ↑ Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, i. 13.
