Cerberus, The Dog of Hades | Page 5

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) ?y[=a]ma and ?abala (the dark and the spotted) tear to pieces the agnihotra of him that sacrifices otherwise. ?abala is the day; ?y[=a]ma is the night. He who sacrifices in the night, his agnihotra ?y[=a]ma tears asunder; he who sacrifices in broad daylight, his agnihotra ?abala 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. ?y[=a]ma and ?abala (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 ?atapatha-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 ?y[=a]ma (the moon-dog) and ?abala (the sun-dog): "From ?y[=a]ma (the moon) do I resort to ?abala (the sun); from ?abala to ?y[=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 here to cling to the dear memories of their birth and youth. This is due in part to the unequaled impressiveness of nature in India; in part to the dogged schematism of the Hindu mind, which dislikes to let go of any part of a thing from the beginning to end. On the one hand, their constant, almost too rhythmic resort to nature in their poetry, and on the other,