born. Hard by rings the crack of their
whip as it sounds in their hands; bright fare they down in storm."
Langlois translates, "Just born are they, self-luminous. Mark ye their
arms, their decorations, their car drawn by deer? Hear ye their clamour?
Listen! 'tis the noise of the whip they hold in their hands, the sound
that stirs up courage in the battle." This is an ordinary example of the
diversities of Vedic translation. It is sufficiently puzzling, nor is
the matter made more transparent by the variety of opinion as to the
meaning of the "deer" along with which the Maruts are said (by some of
the translators) to have been born. This is just the sort of passage
on which a controversy affecting the whole nature of Vedic mythological
ideas might be raised. According to a text in the Yajur Veda, gods, and
men, and beasts, and other matters were created from various portions of
the frame of a divine being named Prajapati.(1) The god Agni, Brahmans
and the goat were born from the mouth of Prajapati. From his breast and
arms came the god Indra (sometimes spoken of as a ram), the sheep, and
of men the Rajanya. Cows and gods called Visvadevas were born together
from his middle. Are we to understand the words "they who were born
together with the spotted deer" to refer to a myth of this kind--a myth
representing the Maruts and deer as having been born at the same birth,
as Agni came with the goat, and Indra with the sheep? This is just the
point on which the Indian commentators were divided.(2) Sayana, the old
commentator, says, "The legendary school takes them for deer with white
spots; the etymological school, for the many-coloured lines of
clouds". The modern legendary (or anthropological) and etymological (or
philological) students of mythology are often as much at variance in
their attempts to interpret the traditions of India.

(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 16.

(2) Max Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, trans., vol. i. p. 59.

Another famous, and almost comic, example of the difficulty of Vedic
interpretation is well known. In Rig-Veda, x. 16, 4, there is a funeral
hymn. Agni, the fire-god, is supplicated either to roast a goat or to
warm the soul of the dead and convey it to paradise. Whether the soul
is to be thus comforted or the goat is to be grilled, is a question that
has mightily puzzled Vedic doctors.(1) Professor Muller and M. Langlois
are all for "the immortal soul", the goat has advocates, or had
advo