human
The brood of Saram[=a], dark beneath and brown, run, looking down upon the sea.
gpt
These two dogs of Yama, verily, are day and night, and the Br[=a]hmana of the _K[=a]ush[=i]takins_ (ii. 9) argues in Talmudic strain:
human
At eve, when the sun has gone down, before darkness has set in, one should sacrifice the _agnihotra_-sacrifice; in the morning before sunrise, when darkness is dispelled, at that time, one should sacrifice the _agnihotra_-sacrifice; at that time the gods arrive. Therefore (the two dogs of Yama) Çy[=a]ma and Çabala (the dark and the spotted) tear to pieces the _agnihotra_ of him that sacrifices otherwise. Çabala is the day; Çy[=a]ma is the night. He who sacrifices in the night, his _agnihotra_ Çy[=a]ma tears asunder; he who sacrifices in broad daylight, his _agnihotra_ Çabala tears asunder. Even more drily the two dogs of Yama are correlated with the time-markers of heaven in a passage of the _T[=a]ittir[=i]ya-Veda_ (v. 7. 19); here sundry parts of the sacrificial horse are assigned to four cosmic phenomena in the following order: 1. Sun and moon. 2. Çy[=a]ma and Çabala (the two dogs of Yama). 3. Dawn. 4. Evening twilight. So that the dogs of Yama are sandwiched in between sun and moon on the one side, dawn and evening twilight on the other. Obviously they are here, either as a special designation of day and night, or their physical equivalents, sun and moon. And now the _Çatapatha-Br[=a]hmana_ says explicitly:
gpt
The moon verily is the divine dog; he looks down upon the cattle of the sacrificer. And again a passage in the Kashmir version of the _Atharva-Veda_ says:
human
The four-eyed dog (the moon) surveys by night the sphere of the night.
gpt
From Çy[=a]ma (the moon) do I resort to Çabala (the sun); from Çabala to Çy[=a]ma. Shaking off sin, as a steed shakes off (the loose hair of) its mane, as the moon frees itself from the maw of R[=a]hu, the demon of eclipse, casting aside my body, my real self delivered, do I enter into the uncreated world of Brahma.
human
of the sun-dog Çabala; the moon-dog is black (Çy[=a]ma or Çy[=a]va). Sun and moon, as they move across the sky, are the natural messengers of Yama, seated on high in the abode of the blessed, but Yama is after all death, and death hounds us all. Epithets like
gpt
or
human
suit neutrally both conceptions. Above all, the earliest statements about Yama's dogs are relieved of their inconsistencies. On the one hand the exhortation to the dead to run past the two dogs in order to get to heaven, suits the idea of the heavenly dogs who are coursing across the sky. On the other hand, by an easy, though quite contrary, change of mental position, the same two heavenly dogs are the guides who guard the way and look upon men favorably; hence they are ordered by Yama to take charge of the dead and to furnish them such health and prosperity as the shades happen to have use for. Again, by an equally simple shift of position, sun and moon move among men as the messengers of death; by night and by day men perish, while these heavenly bodies alternate in their presence among men.[14] Hence a text of the Veda can say in a similar mood:
gpt
May Day and Night procure for us long life (House-book of [=A]çval[=a]yana, ii. 4. 14). Conversely it is a commonplace of the Veda to say that day and night destroy the lives of men. One text says that,
human
(Br[=a]hmana of the _K[=a]ush[=i]takin_, ii. 9). Another, more explicitly,
gpt
; by means of day and night does it destroy the life of mortals (_Çatapatha-Br[=a]hmana_, x. 4. 3. 1). He who wishes to be released from the grim grip of day and night sacrifices (symbolically) white and black rice, and pronounces the words:
human
Hail to Day; hail to Night; hail to Release