Research source

To the wind, moon, and sun bulls, to the cow-cloud, moon, spring and aurora,--leaving it, however, to be…

Date of account: English edition published 1872
Source: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 1 (of 2)
Reference: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 1 (of 2) · selected passage 13
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

to the wind, moon, and sun bulls, to the cow-cloud, moon, spring and aurora,--leaving it, however, to be understood how natural it is to pass from the bull to the handsome hero-prince, and from the cow to the beautiful girl, the rich princess, the valiant heroine, or the wise fairy

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

,--to the wind, moon, and sun bulls, to the cow-cloud, moon, spring and aurora,--leaving it, however, to be understood how natural it is to pass from the bull to the handsome hero-prince, and from the cow to the beautiful girl, the rich princess, the valiant heroine, or the wise fairy. For though in the mythical hymns of the _Rigvedas_ we have little more than hints or foreshadows of the many popular legends which we have thus referred to, often without naming them, these are so many and so precise that it seems to me to be almost impossible not to recognise them. To demonstrate this, however, it will be necessary for me to show further what form the mythological ideas and figures relating to the animals dispersed in the Vedic hymns afterwards assumed in the Hindoo traditions.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

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