brethren [who were only his half-brothers] saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him."[92] When such tales as these came west in Christian times, their references to polygamy were constantly suppressed, and their distinctions between brothers and half-brothers disappeared. In the same way the elder and jealous wife, who had behaved with cruelty in the original stories to the offspring of her rival, often became turned, under Christian influences, into a stepmother who hated her husband's children by a previous marriage. There may, however, be a mythological explanation of the behavior of the two elder brothers. Professor de Gubernatis is of opinion that "in the Vedic hymns, Tritas, the third brother, and the ablest as well as best, is persecuted by his brothers," who, "in a fit of jealousy, on account of his wife, the aurora, and the riches she brings with her from the realm of darkness, the cistern or well [into which he has been lowered], detain their brother in the well,"[93] and he compares this form of the myth with that which it assumes in the following Hindoo tradition. "Three brothers, _Ekata_ (_i.e._ the first), _Dwita_ (_i.e._ the second) and _Trita_ (_i.e._ the third) were travelling in a desert, and being distressed with thirst, came to a well, from which the youngest, Trita, drew water and gave it to his brothers; in requital, they drew him into the well, in order to appropriate his property and having covered the top with a cart-wheel, left him in the well. In this extremity he prayed to the gods to extricate him, and by their favor he made his escape."[94] This myth may, perhaps, be the germ from which have sprung the numerous folk-tales about the desertion of a younger brother in some pit or chasm, into which his brothers have lowered him.[95]