soma, and on its power to stimulate and strengthen him to fight the powers of darkness. He is accordingly entreated with prayerful vehemence to make himself tipsy on soma,[1] and, with the taste characteristic of the hymning sages of the Rig-Veda, he is even termed a cask of soma.[2]
5. Indra is the giver of women,[3] and he provides an aged friend of his with a young wife.[4] Moreover, he rejuvenates old maids,[5] and rescues from death the child of the maiden who had from shame done away with it, and which the ants were gnawing,[6] a curious parallel to Gwydion's providing his son Llew with a wife, and especially to his saving his life at his birth and rearing him to the intense disgust of his maiden mother, Arianrhod.
6. Indra is sometimes said to be the father of both the Sun and the Dawn,[7] while the Sun is also treated as the husband and lover of the Dawn.[8] But Indra is more than once described making war on the Dawn, who is then called a' wicked woman; he chases her, and with his thunderbolt smashes her chariot, which remains wrecked near one of the rivers of Heaven, and she herself rushes headlong from the height of that realm.[9] The meaning of all this is not considered very
- ↑ Perry, p. 165.
- ↑ Ib. p. 173 (Rig- Veda, vi. 69, 2).
- ↑ Ib. p. 187 (Rig-Veda, iv. 17, 16).
- ↑ Ib. p. 189 (Rig-Veda, i. 51, 13).
- ↑ Ib. p. 190 (Rig-Veda, iv. 19, 7).
- ↑ Ib. (Rig-Veda, ij. 15, 7, iv. 19, 9).
- ↑ Bergaigne, ij. 188, 191 (Rig-Veda, iij. 31, 15, iij. 32, 8).
- ↑ Ib. ij. 2 (Rig-Veda, i. 92, 11, i. 115, 2, vij. 76, 3), 14.
- ↑ Ib. ij. 192, 193 (Rig-Veda, iv. 30, 8—11; also ij. 15, 6, x. 73, 6, x. 138, 5).
