Research source

THE CUCKOO, THE HERON, THE HEATHCOCK, THE PARTRIDGE, THE NIGHTINGALE, THE SWALLOW, THE SPARROW, AND

Date of account: English edition published 1872
Source: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2)
Reference: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2) · selected passage 8
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

The Rigvedas speaks of the dog-demons bent upon tormenting Indras, who is requested to kill the monster in the form of an owl, a bat, a dog, a wolf, a great bird, a vulture;[48] it invokes the Açvinâu to destroy on every side the barking dogs;[49] it solicits the friends to destroy the long-tongued and avaricious dog (…

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

The _Rigvedas_ speaks of the dog-demons bent upon tormenting Indras, who is requested to kill the monster in the form of an owl, a bat, a dog, a wolf, a great bird, a vulture;[48] it invokes the Açvinâu to destroy on every side the barking dogs;[49] it solicits the friends to destroy the long-tongued and avaricious dog (in the old Italian chronicle of Giov. Morelli, misers are called Cani del danaro, dogs of money), as the Bhrigavas have killed the monster Makhas.[50] And the skin of the red bitch is another monstrous form in which is dressed every morning (as the aurora in the morning sky), in the twenty-third Mongol story, the beautiful maiden who is in the power of the prince of the dragons; she (as moon) is a beautiful maiden only at night; towards day she becomes a red bitch (the moon gives up her place to the aurora); the youth who has married her wishes to burn this bitch's skin, but the maiden disappears; the sun overtakes the aurora, and he disappears with the moon.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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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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