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INTRODUCTION,
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compared with the filter of white sheep's wool, through which the Soma-juice percolates into the vat. The same simile, in my opinion, is implied wherever the formula pavate (a) vrishtim, he clarifies himself into rain,' is used (IX, 49, 1; 3 ; 65, 3; 24; 96, 14; 108, 10). And, in truth, the simile seems to me a very striking one; but we must not, of course, think of single flashes of lightning such as we are accustomed to in our northern climes (and as are doubtless implied in the Vedic conception of the Vagra or thunderbolt), but of that continuous and widespread electric illumination (vi-dyut) which forms a characteristic feature of the monsoon, when the showers of rain seem to flow through an immense space of light".
' For a description of this phenomenon in the districts where we must imagine the Vedic poets to have composed their hynins, see Elphinstone, Account of the Kingdom of Cabool, p. 126 seq.
I cannot forbear here to quote a few extracts from a graphic description of the setting in of the monsoon in India proper, given in the Rev. H. Caunter's Oriental Annual (1834) :-'There was a slight haze upon the distant waters which seemed gradually to thicken, although not to a density sufficient to refract the rays of the sun, which still flooded the broad sea with one unvarying mass of glowing light .... Towards the afternoon, the aspect of the sky began to change; the horizon gathered blackness, and the san, which had risen so brightly, had evidently culminated in darkness, and to have his splendour veiled from human sight by a long, gloomy period of storm and turbulence. Masses of heavy clouds appeared to rise from the sea, black and portentous, accompanied by sudden gasts of wind, that suddenly died away, being succeeded by an intense, death-like stillness, as if the air were in a state of utter stagnation, and its vital properties arrested. It seemed no longer to circulate, until again agitated by the brief but mighty gusts which swept fiercely along, like the giant heralds of the sky. Meanwhile the lower circle of the heavens looked a deep brassy red, from the partial reflection of the sunbeams upon the thick clouds, which had now everywhere overspread it .... From the house which we occupied we could behold the setting in of the monsoon in all its grand and terrific sublimity. The wind, with a force which nothing could resist, bent the tufted heads of the tall, slim cocoa-nut trees almost to the earth, flinging the light sand into the air in eddying vortices, until the rain had either so increased its gravity, or beaten it into a mass, as to prevent the wind from raising it. The pale lightning streamed from the clouds in broad sheets of flame, which appeared to encircle the heavens as if every element had been converted into fire, and the world was on the eve of a general conflagration, whilst the peal, which instantly followed, was like the explosion of a gunpowder-magazine, or the discharge of artillery in the gorge of 4 mountain, where the repercussion of surrounding hills multiplies with terrific energy its deep and astounding echoes. The heavens seemed to be
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