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 132
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

[478] Indras, as a warlike god, does not know fear, or rather, he kills fear (the hymn says, "Aher yâtâram kam apaçya indra hridi yat te gaghnuso bhîr agacchat"; Rigv. i

Published source text

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Source passage

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[478] Indras, as a warlike god, does not know fear, or rather, he kills fear (the hymn says, "Aher yâtâram kam apaçya indra hridi yat te gaghnuso bhîr agacchat"; _Rigv._ i. 32, 14), and lets himself be terrified by a trifle, which may be either a nightly shadow (the dark man of fairy tales), or the terror caused to him by some fish (the moon) which leaps upon him in the waters which he himself has set free.--In the twenty-second of the Tuscan stories published by me, the young hero who passed through all the dangers of hell without being afraid, dies at the sight of his own shadow. (We have also referred to this when treating of the dog and the lion who meet with their death, allured by their own shadow.)--In the forty-sixth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the merchant's son, who did not know fear, who feared neither darkness nor brigands nor death, is terrified and dies when he falls into the water, because the little perch entered into his bosom whilst he was sleeping in his fishing-boat.--It is also easy to pass from the idea of Indras, who inebriates himself in the _soma_ to that of the fish, when we consider that the Hindoo word _matsyas_, the fish, properly means the inebriated, from the root _mad_, to inebriate an

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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