SANSKRIT STUDIES
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is no difficulty in discovering what natural objects and phenomena these gods represent. As one Western scholar has put it many of the Vedic gods are transparent. Thus the earliest poetry of India is at bottom nature-poetry in its simplest and purest form. The conditions of this paper do not permit of large extracts from the Veda being read, but yet to indicate some of the salient features of its poetry, I shall give in English a brief account of the Vedic description of Usas, the goddesss of Dawn, in portraying whose glory the ancient bards have exhibited their best poetic skill.
The Dawn is generally represented as the daughter of Heaven. Born in the eastern quarter of the firmament she places herself on the lap of Father Heaven and Mother Earth and fills them both with radiance. Night and day are her sisters. She is the bride of the far-darting sun. Clothed in pure and brilliant vesture she shines radiant by his side like a youthful wife in the presence of her husband. In another mood, the poets liken her, as she marches onward dispelling darkness, to a warrior casting his arrows or to a swift charger scattering enemies; and the rays that she sends to the extremities of the sky are figured as people arrayed in martial order, before whom the solid and odious glooms descend and disappear, seeking their abode. We have more direct pictures also of the Dawn. In shining light, before the wind arises, she comes gleaming over the waters and sets open the two gates of heaven. One poet says she illumes the world like congregated lightnings; another that she gives back all the regions. She softens the earth with balmy dews. She is the restorer of consciousness ; the reposit- ory of sweetness. There are other passages which add a pathetic note to what is otherwise purely naturalistic poetry. For example one poet states that the divine and ancient Usas, born again and again and bright with unchanging hues, wastes away the life of mortals. Another poet crossing the border line between poetry and philosophy, which is always faint, cries out ‘For how long a period is it that the Dawns have arisen? For how long a period will they rise? Those mortals who beheld the pristine Usas dawning have passed away; to us she is now visible; and they approach who may behold her in after times. She is exempt from decay or death and goes on for ever in her divine splendour’.
This poetry is such as may be expected to arise in a society which was in intimate communion with nature. There is nothing
