Page 396 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE COWS' WALK 181

bringing back the succession of ordinary days and nights, inasmuch
as the long night immediately follows and precedes the period of
sunshine in the Arctic regions.
But a far more striking corroboration of the above view is
furnished by certain passages in the A vesta which describe the
fight of Tishtrya with the demon of draught caUed Apao ha or
' the burner ' in the Parsi scriptures. In the .Rig-Veda the fight of
Indra with Vritra ( Vritra-tu rya) is often represented as ' a struggle
for waters ' ( ap-tt~rya ), or as 'the striving for cows' ( go-i~h{i ),
or' the striving for day ( div-i~h~i ), and Indra is said to have rei e-
ased the cows or waters, and brought on the dawn or the sun by
killing Vritra (I, 51, 4; II, 19, 3 ). Now Indra, as Vritra-han,
appears as Verethraghna in the Avesta; but the fight for waters is
therein ascribed not to Verethraghna but to Tishtrya, the star of
rain. It is he, who knocks down Apaosha and liberate the waters
for the benefit of mao, " with the assistance of the winds, and the
light that dwells in the waters. " In short Tishtrya's conque t over
Apaosha is an exact parallel of Indra's conquest over Vritra as
de cribed in the .Rig-Veda; and as the legends are interpreted at
present, they are said to refer to the breaking up of the clouds and
tbe bringing on of the rains on the earth, Tishtrya being supposed
to be the star of rain. But this theory fails to account for the fact
how the recovery of the dawn and the rising of the sun, or the
bringing on of light, were included amongst the effects of Indra's
victory over Vritra. It will be shown in the next chapter that the
struggle for waters has very little to do with rain, and that the fight
for waters and the fight for light are really synchronou , being two
different versions of the same story. In short, both of these legends
really represent the victory of the powers of light over darkness.
Shu~hlla or ' the scorcher ' is one of the names given to Indra's
enemy in the .Rig-Veda (I, 51, 11 ), and the result of the conflict
between Indra and Shush9a is the release of the waters, as well
as the finding of the morning cows ( VIIJ, 96, 17 ), and the winning
of the sun ( VI, 20, 5 ). Apaosha is thus Shu~hpa under a different
garb, and the only difference between the two legends is that while
Indra is the chief actor in the one, Tishtrya is the chief hero in the
other. But this difference is immaterial inasmuch as the attributes
of one deity are often transferred, even in .Rig-Veda, to another.
The Avestic legend of Tishtrya is, therefore, rightly understood by
Zend scholars to be a reproduction of the Vedic legend of Indra and