[Footnote 15: "Bore them" (gave an udder). In v. 52. 16 Rudra is father and Priçni, mother. Compare viii. 94. 1: "The cow ... the mother of the Maruts, sends milk (rain)." In x. 78. 6 the Maruts are sons of Sindhu (Indus).] [Footnote 16: I.e., die.] [Footnote 17: The number is not twenty-seven, as Muir accidentally states, OST. v. p. 147.] [Footnote 18: v. 58. 4, 5; I. 88. 1; 88. 5; v. 54. 11; viii. 7. 25; i. 166. 10; i. 39. 1; 64. 2-8; v. 54. 6; i. 85. 8; viii. 7. 34; v. 59. 2.] [Footnote 19: He carries lightnings and medicines together in vii. 46. 3.] [Footnote 20: Çiva is later identified with Rudra. For the latter in RV. compare i. 43; 114, 1-5, 10; ii. 33. 2-13.] [Footnote 21: vii. 47, and x. 75.] [Footnote 22: vii. 103.] [Footnote 23: _Akhkhala_ is like Latin _eccere_ shout of joy and wonder(_Am.J. Phil._ XIV. p. 11).] [Footnote 24: Literally, 'that has stood over-night,' i.e., fermented.] [Footnote 25: To this hymn is added, in imitation of the laudations of generous benefactors, which are sometimes suffixed to an older hymn, words ascribing gifts to the frogs. Bergaigne regards the frogs as meteorological phenomena! It is from this hymn as a starting-point proceed the latter-day arguments of Jacobi, who would prove the 'period of the Rig Veda' to have begun about 3500 B.C. One might as well date Homer by an appeal to the Batrachomyomachia.] [Footnote 26: x. 98. 6.] [Footnote 27: vii. 102.] [Footnote 28: Compare Bühler, _Orient and Occident_, I. p. 222.] [Footnote 29: This hymn is another of those that contradict the first assumption of the ritualists. From internal evidence it is not likely that it was made for baksheesh.] [Footnote 30: _[A]suras, pit[=a] nas_.] [Footnote 31: Literally, 'with _ghee_'; the rain is like the _ghee_, or sacrificial oil (melted butter).] [Footnote 32: Some suppose even Indra to be one with the Avestan _A[.n]dra_, a demon, which is possible.] [Footnote 33: Otherwise it is the 'bonds of sin' which are broken or loosed, as in the last verse of the first Varuna hymn, translated above. But the two views may be of equal antiquity (above, p. 69, note). On Trita compare JRAS. 1893, p. 419; PAOS. 1894 (Bloomfield).] * * * * * CHAPTER V. THE RIG VEDA (CONTINUED).--THE LOWER GODS. AGNI. Great are the heavenly gods, but greater is Indra, god of the atmosphere. Greatest are Agni and Soma, the gods of earth.