Cerberus, The Dog of Hades | Page 5

phenomenon in the heavens.
Yet another text, Hiranyakeçin's book of house-rites, locates the dogs
of Yama, describing them in unmistakable language, in heaven: "The
brood of Saram[=a], dark beneath and brown, run, looking down upon
the sea." (ii. 7. 2.)
THE TWO DOGS OF YAMA EXPLAIN THEMSELVES.
There are not many things in heaven that can be represented as a pair,
coursing across the sky, looking down upon the sea, and having other
related properties. My readers will make a shrewd guess, but I prefer to
let the texts themselves unfold the transparent mystery. The Veda of the
Katha school (xxxvii. 14) says: "These two dogs of Yama, verily, are
day and night," and the Br[=a]hmana of the K[=a]ush[=i]takins (ii. 9)
argues in Talmudic strain: "At eve, when the sun has gone down,
before darkness has set in, one should sacrifice the agnihotra-sacrifice;
in the morning before sunrise, when darkness is dispelled, at that time,
one should sacrifice the agnihotra-sacrifice; at that time the gods arrive.
Therefore (the two dogs of Yama) Çy[=a]ma and Çabala (the dark and
the spotted) tear to pieces the agnihotra of him that sacrifices otherwise.
Çabala is the day; Çy[=a]ma is the night. He who sacrifices in the night,
his agnihotra Çy[=a]ma tears asunder; he who sacrifices in broad
daylight, his agnihotra Çabala tears asunder." Even more drily the two
dogs of Yama are correlated with the time-markers of heaven in a
passage of the T[=a]ittir[=i]ya-Veda (v. 7. 19); here sundry parts of
the sacrificial horse are assigned to four cosmic phenomena in the
following order: 1. Sun and moon. 2. Çy[=a]ma and Çabala (the two

dogs of Yama). 3. Dawn. 4. Evening twilight. So that the dogs of Yama
are sandwiched in between sun and moon on the one side, dawn and
evening twilight on the other. Obviously they are here, either as a
special designation of day and night, or their physical equivalents, sun
and moon. And now the Çatapatha-Br[=a]hmana says explicitly: "The
moon verily is the divine dog; he looks down upon the cattle of the
sacrificer." And again a passage in the Kashmir version of the
Atharva-Veda says: "The four-eyed dog (the moon) surveys by night
the sphere of the night."
SUN AND MOON AS STATIONS ON THE WAY TO SALVATION.
Even the theosophic Upanishads are compelled to make their way
through this tolerably crude mythology when they come to deal with
the passage of the soul to release from existence and absorption in the
universal Brahma. The human mind does not easily escape some kind
of eschatological topography. The Brahma itself may be devoid of all
properties, universal, pervasive, situated below as well as above, the
one true thing everywhere; still even the Upanishads finally fix upon a
world of Brahma, and that is above, not below, nor elsewhere; hence
the soul must pass the great cosmic potencies that seem to lie on the
road from the sublunary regions to Brahma. The K[=a]ush[=i]taki
Upanishad (1. 2. 3) arranges that all who leave this world first go to the
moon, the moon being the door of the world of light. The moon asks
certain theosophic questions; he alone who can answer them is
considered sufficiently emancipated to advance to the world of Brahma.
He who cannot--alas!--is born again as worm or as fly; as fish or as
fowl; as lion or as boar; as bull or tiger or man; or as something
else--any old thing, as we should say--in this place or in that place,
according to the quality of his works and the degree of his knowledge;
that is, in accordance with the doctrine of Karma. Similarly the
M[=a]itri Upanishad (vi. 38) sketches salvation as follows: When a
mortal no longer approves of wrath, and ponders the true wish, he
penetrates the veil that encloses the Brahma, breaks through the
concentric circles of sun, moon, fire, etc., that occupy the ether. Only
then does he behold the supreme thing that is founded upon its own
greatness only. And now the Ch[=a]ndogya Upanishad (viii. 13) has

the same idea, mentioning both moon and sun by their ancient names
and in their capacity as dogs of Yama. The soul of the aspirant for
fusion with Brahma resorts purgatorio-fashion alternately to Çy[=a]ma
(the moon-dog) and Çabala (the sun-dog): "From Çy[=a]ma (the moon)
do I resort to Çabala (the sun); from Çabala to Çy[=a]ma. Shaking off
sin, as a steed shakes off (the loose hair of) its mane, as the moon frees
itself from the maw of R[=a]hu, the demon of eclipse, casting aside my
body, my real self delivered, do I enter into the uncreated world of
Brahma."[13]
ANALYSIS OF THE MYTH.
Hindu mythology is famous for what I should like to hear called
arrested personification, or arrested anthropomorphism. More than
elsewhere mythic figures seem