Handbook of History of Religions

SR No.: 007634
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune
Total Pages: 678
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 2 MB

Page 79

Thy radiant beams beneficent Like herds of cattle now appear; Aurora fills the wide expanse.
With light hast thou the dark removed, Filling (the world), O brilliant one. Aurora, help us as thou us'st.
With rays thou stretchest through the heaven And through the fair wide space between, O Dawn, with thy refulgent light.
It was seen that Savitar (P[=u]shan) is the rising and setting sun. So, antithetic to Dawn, stands the Abendroth with her sister, Night. This last, generally, as in the hymn just translated, is lauded only in connection with Dawn, and for herself alone gets but one hymn, and that is not in a family-book. She is to be regarded, therefore, less as a goddess of the pantheon than as a quasi-goddess, the result of a poet's meditative imagination, rather than one of the folk's primitive objects of adoration; somewhat as the English poets personify "Ye clouds, that far above me float and pause, ye ocean-waves ... ye woods, that listen to the night-bird's singing, O ye loud waves, and Oye forests high, and Oye clouds that far above me soared; thou rising sun, thou blue rejoicing sky!"—and as in Greek poetry, that which before has been conceived of vaguely as divine suddenly is invested with a divine personality. The later poet exalts these aspects of nature, and endows those that were before only half recognized with a little special praise. So, whereas Night was divine at first merely as the sister of divine Dawn, in the tenth book one poet thus gives her praise:
HYMN TO NIGHT (X. 127).
Night, shining goddess, comes, who now Looks out afar with many eyes, And putteth all her beauties on.