A Heifer of the Sun: Preface

PREFACE.

ALL SWEETNESS, says the Rig Weda, IS COLLECTED IN THE HEIFER a: the Red One of the Dawn. And the Oriental use of the word, heifer, to signify a wife or queen, is familiar to every reader of the Hebrew Bible. If ye had not ploughed with my heifer, said Samson, ye had not found out my riddle. Thus the meaning of the title of this little story is at once clear: the collected sweetness of the heifer: i.e., the ambrosia b of the early morning, in a feminine form.

All know it, the nectar of dawn, who are wise enough to rise, like the hero of this story, before the sun. And yet, perhaps it is necessary to live in the East, properly to appreciate the meaning of morning. Love, for example, is a very old God: as some of the ancient Greeks

c. Why is that? Because he comes out of the East: he belongs to the Dawn. EROS, EOS, AURORA, USHAS, ARUSHA. First comes Night, and Chaos: and then, out of the black there arises, silently, imperceptibly, irresistibly, the glorious, the blushing, the beautiful, amber-clouded, opal-shredded, amethyst-bedappled Dawn. O Dawn, how I do love thee! how, after a night of blackness and distress, has thy delicious fragrance raised me from the dead, with its colour and its camphor and the nectar touch of its rosy finger, softer than flowers, cooler than sandal-wood. Yes, it is necessary to be a dweller in the East, to taste and understand the religion of the Dawn.

And the heifer? What is the secret of the rooted affection of the Aryan and Iranian, the Weda and Awesta, for the Cow?

Partly, no doubt, its utilitarian value. But they are deceived, who think that this is all. There is religion d in it, mysticism, æsthetic affection. The Cow is an Idea. This was first brought home to the translator in the following way.

Passing through Rajputána, he came to Jeypore. And it happened, on a hot afternoon, that he was rambling

e moving delicately with that undulating hesitation which the Creator has bestowed only upon women and cows, reached the black jaws

POONA, Dec. 17, 1903.

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Footnotes

vii:a iii. 3O, 14. (The translation is literally exact: wishwam swádma sambhritam usriyáyam.)

vii:b The feminine form, amritá, is the name of one of the digits of the moon. And apropos: could we penetrate into the darkness of mythological origins, we might perhaps discover, that the half-moon on the forehead of Maheshwara is related to the horns of his bull. And similarly, Isis, the hornèd moon = Io, the heifer.

viii:c As also in Rig Weda, 10. 129. 4.

viii:d If you like, superstition. But it is not growing weaker. I have repeatedly suggested, to comparatively emancipated Hindoos, that cows might be killed. The very possibility was always repudiated with horror and disgust.

ix:e Every Hindoo deity has his (or her) 'vehicle,' or wáhana.