Page 104 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE ANTELOPE'S HEAD 91

Another objection that may be urged against this identification is
that we are required to suppose Mrigashtras to be once the hea~
of Prajapati, and at another time that of Vritra. It must, however,
be remembered that we do so on the express authority of the
tigveda, and that besides it is quite natural to suppose that once
the antelope's head was said to exist in the heavens, Vedic poets
vied with each other in weaving legends out of it. As an illustration
I refer to tig. x. 86. 5, where the poet describes Vri•Mkapi's head
as cut off, but soon after Vri~bakapi is told that it was an illusion,
and that in. reality it was some one else whose head was so severed
(verse 18 ). This clearly shows that it was a period when legends.
were still being formed out of the ' antelope's head. '
We can now explain how later writers evolved a myth out of
Namuchi's death. The story is given in the Ta11~ya BrAhm~lla
( xii. 6. 8 ). • There we are told that Indra and Namuchi came to
a settlement that the former should kill the latter, neither during
day nor by night, nor by any weapon, whether dry or wet. Indra
therefore killed him with the foam of the waters at the junction of
day and night, when it had dawned, but yet the sun had not risen.
It is probably this circumstance that has led Professor Max Muller
to suppose that Orthros represents the gloom of the morning. But
the explanation does not account for the other incidents in the story.
Was Namuchi or Vritra killed every morning by Indra? Or was it
only at the beginning of the rainy season'? Evidently the latter.
We must then suppose that Namuchi was killed after dawn, but
before the actual daybreak, at or during the monsoons. In other
words, the junction of day and night in the later myths must be
understood to mean a particular junction of day and night in the
rains, or more definitely, the junction of the day and the night of
the Gods-the junction of the Pitriylna and the DevayAna, the
sates of which are said to be cleared up by Namuchi's death in
the passage from the ~igveda given above. The latter part of the
legend is, however, still more poetical, and Prof. Max Muller's

• See aiso Taitt. Br. i. 7. r. 7; Shat. Br. xii. 7· 3· 3· Also the Pud-
.. l)aS, Rlmlyal}a iii. 30. 28; Mahlbhlrat Udyoga Parva ix. 29. Prof. Bloom-
field bas collected all such passages in his article on the contributions
to the Interpretation of the Veda in the Jo·::rnal of American Oriental
Sot:iety, Vol. XV, pp. 148-rsS. The legend of Hira~;~ya-Kashipu in
the PuraQlls appears to have been based on Namuchi's story.